


Fistful of Stars

by OddityBoddity



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Drowning, Epistolary, FIx It, Generalized clusterfuck, Headfuck, Hypnosis, M/M, PTSD, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve is having a hard time tuning in reality, Suicidal Ideation, There is no canon she said hopefully, WIP, X-Men Crossover, aou fix it, oh shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-01-23 15:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 34,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12510160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddityBoddity/pseuds/OddityBoddity





	1. Chapter 1

Steve swallows the last gulp of beer. As if she was waiting for the cue, Sharon pushes her chair back from the table and heads over to the fridge.

“Going in for round two?” Steve asks.

She looks at him over the top of the fridge. “Heck yes. What about you?”

He shrugs. “Sun’s over the yardarm somewhere,” he says.

She grins and ducks into the fridge again. He hears her say, “That’s a weirdly nautical saying from somebody who was a ground-pounder.”

“Is that what they call it now?” he asks, sitting forward. He hears the clink of two more bottles.

“What’d they call it back then?”

“Cornplaster commando,” Steve answers, a little wistfully. Sharon laughs, and then shuts the fridge with her knee and comes over to Steve’s kitchen table with the beers.“Opener’s on the counter,” he tells her.

Her grin gets cocky. She locks eyes with him and twists the cap off in her hand. He laughs. “Okay.”

She slides his over to him. “They’re twist offs.” She winks. He salutes with his beer.

“Something new every day.”

“Especially for you,” she agrees. She takes a sip and sets the beer down on be-ringed tabletop. Steve reaches over and swipes the tea towel off the stove and then passes it across the damp table top. “Thanks barkeep,” Sharon says and sets her beer down again. She leans back into her chair. “Why didn’t we do this before?” she asks.

Steve shrugs. “You were on duty?”

“And you were looking for a girlfriend.”

Steve grimaces. “Sorry about that.”

Sharon shrugs. “You didn’t know. That was the point.” She takes another sip and sets the beer down again, toying with a corner of the label. “I feel a little bad about that,” she says at last.

“Me too, for what it’s worth.”

Her eyebrows go up and Steve shrugs. “I was… I wasn’t exactly the most understanding of guys there for a bit. And,” he adds, because he hasn’t said it yet, and he knows about not saying things when you have the chance, “I’ve been meaning to say thank you. For having my back at SHIELD.”

She shifts in her seat a little and sticks out her bottom lip. “Bah,” she says finally.

He laughs through his nose. The longer Sharon stays in the guest room, the more he likes her. At first he thought all they had in common was Peggy, and SHIELD, but now he sees how much other stuff they share. They want a better world than this. They are both congenitally unable to follow shitty orders. They believe that people are mostly good most of the time, and all you have to do is give that goodness an avenue to come out. All that, and Peggy too.

“I heard from Sister Mary Anita,” Sharon says then, like she’s reading his thoughts.

“Mmh?” Steve asks through a swig of the beer.

“She says Aunt Peg’s doing better. She might beat the pneumonia.”

Steve doesn’t say it, and that’s fine, Sharon does it for him.

“I’m trying not to get my hopes up.”

Steve nods. “The dry weather probably helps.” He knows about rattling lungs and the damp. This last week has been dry and hot. A gift right from God, as far as Steve’s concerned.

“She also said Aunt Peggy liked the last bouquet. Incidentally, what the hell is scabiosa? It sounds like a skin condition.”

“They’re really pretty, actually. Flowers. But you’re right, it’s a terrible name. I figured Peg would get a kick out of them.”

“Well she did.” Sharon peels the label half off and then tries to stick it back on.

“I don’t that that’s going to work.”

She flicks it from her fingers onto the table and then sits back and fixes him with a look. “You know,” she starts, her voice a little higher than it really ought to be. “This is weird.”

“Huh?”

“Sitting here, drinking a couple beer with you. This is…” she leans forward and points at him. “You do know who you are, right?”

Steve has to stop himself from rolling his eyes, because that’s just rude. But he does groan. “Oh, come on. Not you too.”

“No, not that,” Sharon waves her hand like she’s shooing a fly. “Not the Cap stuff, I mean Aunt Peg used to let me go through her photo albums, and there you were. And I kinda grew up on stories about you. Which, if you’re wondering, is part of why I always said no. Not just because of work. But also because of work. Did you wonder?”

Steve laughs. “I know you’re not going to believe this, but I have a lot of practice getting turned down.”

She grins. “You take it well. You should give lessons.” And then, suddenly, her grin turns impish. “You know, I never believed her. Aunt Peg, I mean. About you. The stories all seemed too…” she gestures in big circles with her free hand.

Steve looks down at himself, huge thighs squeezed into khakis and a t-shirt that is trying to escape before the seams suffer catastrophic failure. He really needs to get over his dislike of change rooms and start trying stuff on. He’s an awful judge of his own body size. “I can see how,” he tells her. “Sometimes I can’t believe it either.”

She nods, eyes a little shrewd. “I… had a doll,” she says then. “An action figure, I guess. Of you. Aunt Peg got it for me after I had a tantrum in Maitland’s and refused to leave until she bought it.”

“Oh?” he asks. He can’t imagine Peg ever bowing to a tantruming child. It must have been a hell of a storm.

“So in a way, you were the first boy I ever kissed.”

He laughs. Sharon shakes her head. “God, I had such a crush on you.” She turns thoughtful then. “Everybody around me was into you. It was the cold war.” Her voice had gone a little soft. “I guess all the adults were scared. They probably just wanted someone to make everything seem less crazy.”

“And the kids?”

“Well, me?” She takes a drink, as if she needs to get ready for this. “My ten year old self wanted a boyfriend and I figured it would either be you or Carl Sagan.” She adds. And Steve knows about that guy, Sam loves that space show. Steve has to admit, it’s pretty incredible.

“Sagan?” he asks. “The Cosmos guy?”

“Those turtlenecks,” Sharon says, and gives him a conspiratorial wink. “Mmm-mmm-mmm.”

He laughs helplessly.

They share a companionable silence and in that moment, Steve’s phone buzzes. It won’t be the Sister; she’d call Sharon if anything urgent happened. Maybe it’s Natasha or Sam, though. “Excuse me,” he murmurs and checks his phone. A text from Clint. Nat’s coming into JFK at 11. All the warm fizz of laughter and talk vanishes and the old, leaden self is back. Nat’s coming home, and that means more information about Bucky. He thinks about those letters, those scrambled, crazy, messed up letters, and something tightens in his throat like a fist. Sharon clocks it.

“Everything okay?” she asks.

“I, uh.” He puts the phone face-down on the table. “I have to go soon.”

“Avenging?” She quirks an eyebrow.

He shakes his head. He can’t match her levity any more. It’s like somebody’s let it all drain out of him. “No, not… but.” He stops and tries to sort out his mind. In the last week, he’s grown to like Sharon the way he had only ever liked Sam and Natasha. And Sharon has the benefit of standing outside that circle, and looking in. She’s not a super, and she doesn’t run with them. And he knows he can trust her, which is saying something these days. “I… I want to go to Europe,” he ventures quietly. “See an old friend. I’m on the fence about the trip.”

She’s looking at him, silent, assessing. She’s so like Peggy when she does this. Other people jump in, finish his sentences, give his thoughts direction. But Peggy always waited. And Sharon does too.

“I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do,” he says at last. “I don’t know what the right thing is.”

She presses her lips together. It’s not disapproval, it’s consideration. “You think it might be hard for your friend, like it’s hard for Aunt Peg?”

“Yeah.” He can hear the way his breath shudders in and out of him. “I think it’ll be real hard for him.”

“And you.”

“And me,” he agrees. She looks down at her beer and then at him again.

“You should go,” she says. No pity, no hesitation. She shrugs at him. “Say you decided not to bother a nice old lady with dementia when you came back, and then you found out she too sick to see anybody, and might die. How would you feel?”

“Bad,” he says. It doesn’t begin to cover how he would feel, but it’ll do.

“Right?” she asks. “I mean, who knows how much time anybody has?”

He nods again, looking down into his beer. It’s the tip of an iceberg, that question. In his darkest, most awful moments, he wonders how much time he has. He wonders if the serum will keep him young forever, if all this might just be a fleeting moment in some interminable lifetime. He fears he may be immortal, and that Peggy is the first in an endless parade of loved ones who will pass away before his eyes. He doesn’t know if Bucky is like him, or if it’s just that he was frozen for so many days of his life that he has hardly aged at all. He doesn’t think even Peggy can teach him what he’ll need to know if he has to sit at Bucky’s bedside and hear his last few breaths.

And there are other issues, too. Not just mortality. Every two-bit semi-super, every kid out to prove herself, every bereaved loved one with a grudge, every politician looking to score quick points, every cop and gumshoe who wants their name in the paper, they’re all looking for Bucky. Anyone with any sense would be watching Steve with a keen eye. He doesn’t want to be the one who leads the trouble to him.

“Steve,” Sharon says, commanding but quiet. “You should go. Before it’s too late. ‘You don’t have to complete the work, but neither are you at free to stop working’ right? Don’t worry about getting it done. Just get to it. ”

He nods. She’s right, of course. “Yeah,” he agrees. He sets his beer down on the table. His heart aches as if someone had been trying to pull it out of his chest, or as if it has been trying to go all on its own, to hell with the big, stupid body that cages it. He knows that ache of old. “Will you keep me up to date? I mean, on Peggy’s condition?”

Sharon sits back, looking almost offended. “Of course.”

He nods. This, getting up, getting moving. It feels good. It feels right. This is a thing he has needed to do since he woke up in the hospital, since he knew that Bucky was alive and free in the world. He can’t recapture the levity of earlier, but he feels the fondness for Sharon again. Good advice, good company. “I owe you another one,” he tells her.

She tilts her head up to look at him and narrows her eyes. “You keep racking up debt, and eventually I’m going to collect, you know.”

He can’t help but laugh. “What could I possibly give you?”

“I’d take a kiss,” she says, and her eyes are wicked and bright. “That would be the fulfilment of a childhood dream. Bucket list item. Definitely. Next time I do you a solid, I’m collecting.”

He laughs. “Sure. Yeah. Okay.”

“Bring me back something nice from Europe, too,” she adds as he starts toward his room. He glances over his shoulder at her.

“Like a… silver spoon or something?”

“Alternative possibility: No bullshit and good news.”

Steve opens his mouth and then shuts it. He points at her. Finally he says, “No promises.”

“At least you’re honest,” she answers, and salutes with her beer.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s at the airport when he gets a text from Clint.

_Nat’s flight’s in a bit early. See you there?_

And the timing is too perfect to pass up. He picks up his duffle, abandons the Departures lounge, and heads over to the Arrivals gate. He finds Clint waiting in a press of friends and loved ones, craning for a glimpse of new arrivals as if they were celebrities. The place smells of sweat and stale car exhaust, and that weird citrus-scented cleaner that everybody seems to use these days. Clint nods when Steve sidles up to stand beside him, those watercolour eyes clocking him from top to toes.

“You dropping off or picking up?” Clint asks, jerking his chin at Steve’s duffle bag.

Steve sets the duffle down on the floor at his feet. “Not sure,” he answers. Clint grunts and turns back to scanning the crowd. Steve sees the smile break on his face; it starts on the right side and spreads to his left, lopsided and dopey.

“There she is,” he says.

Steve looks. It’s a second or two before he sees her. He finds himself grinning, too. She’s carrying a straw bag over one shoulder, and a rumpled black coat over one arm, walking purposefully through the doors and out into the scrum of families and friends and shouting and hugging. Her face is a little more pale than usual, and her eyes a little darker. _Tired_ , Steve thinks with a pinch of worry in his belly. _Something happened over there._

“Nat!” Clint hollers, and raises his arm to wave. She spots them and heads toward them, neatly sidestepping a man with a fully loaded baggage cart hurtling toward his family.

“That was close,” Steve says by way of greeting.

She gives him a long-suffering look and just says, “Commercial air travel." Then she smiles at Clint. “I thought you’d be at the farm by now.”

Clint shrugs. “You said to stay on stand-by.”

Steve blinks. “Stay on standby?” he asks her. 

Natasha glances at him and if she wasn’t her, and if he wasn’t him, and if they hadn’t pulled each other’s asses out of the fire too many times to count the week the Winter Soldier was loose in DC, Steve would never have noticed the flicker of irritation in her eyes. But he did. That seals it.

“I’m on the next flight out to Bucharest,” Steve says, hefting the duffle bag. “Unless you give me a hell of a good reason not to go.”

She raises her chin at him. “As it happens, I have two.”

He plants his feet like he’s going to make a last stand, there at the arrivals gate. “You’re going to have to give me more detail than that,” he says.

Nat nods at him. “I will,” she answers, and ducks as someone swings a pair of skis over their shoulder, completely oblivious of nearly clocking Natasha. “But this is not the place to talk.”

She’s been holding him off for weeks now, and the letters from Bucharest are playing on Steve’s mind. He hasn’t been sleeping. All he can think of is that repeated line of text, _Ready to comply, ready to comply, ready to comply_. “I have a flight out in thirty minutes.” 

Natasha nods, as if she expected it. “That’s plenty of time. Let’s get a coffee.”

 

They find a little coffee stand squeezed between a car rental place and a hop-on-hop-off bus tour place. Clint and Natasha lead, and Steve trails behind. He does have a ticket, he bought it on the way to the airport, using his phone and his credit card and sitting in the back of a cab with a cabbie singing _Dust in the Wind_ at the top of his lungs as he hurtled through traffic, and a part of Steve is starting to get a handle on this screwed up time, and a part of Steve is glad New York hasn’t changed. And now he has thirty minutes to get through security, but he figures he can use his celebrity to clear it a little faster than average if he has to. To get to Bucky, he’ll find a way to manage.

Clint bellies up to the coffee stand’s counter and frowns at the menu. “Just, I’ll have, uh, tea, I guess,” he says to the bored looking guy behind the till. Nat glances at Clint.

“I’m… I’m on a cleanse,” Clint says, almost convincingly.

“You’re broke again,” she counters, not unkindly, and fishes her wallet from her back pocket. “Let me.”

Clint grins. “Thanks.”

Natasha pulls out her credit card. “He’ll have the Americano. Small coffee for me. Steve?”

Steve shrugs. “Same. Thank you.”

The guy rings it up and Natasha pays for all of them. Steve takes his black. It was how he learned to drink coffee as a kid - cold black coffee was his go-to for an asthma attack for his teenage years. When the war started, everything was rationed and he never got a taste for sugar in coffee the way some people did. Clint pours enough sugar and milk into his coffee to make up for Steve’s whole abstinent life. Natasha hardly notices. She pours a little cream into her coffee, turning it a sort of caramel brown, and then leads them overto some benches. They sit together, Nat and Clint on one side, and Steve facing them, the duffle between his feet. From a distance they must look like old friends catching up, maybe even waiting for a fourth to join them. _If only_ , Steve thinks.

“First and most important,” Nat says, smiling slightly from behind her coffee cup, “I saw your friend and he’s doing surprisingly well.”

Steve’s heart does something in his chest, trips over itself in its haste to get running.

Steve waits for more. Natasha sips her coffee. A moment slips by, and then another. And suddenly Steve understands. This is all he is going to get. Weeks of waiting, for _this_.

Steve wants to get to his feet. He wants to shout. He wants to know what she means, how he could possibly wring anything out of _surprisingly well,_ that stupid, useless little phrase. He holds himself very still, carefully, carefully not squeezing the delicate paper cup in his hand. Natasha is watching him, calculation in those sharp green eyes.

“Glad to hear it,” Steve says, just as carefully as he holds the paper cup. “I was planning on dropping in to say hi.”

Natasha hesitates for less than a half second and then tilts her head, humming softly. “He wouldn’t appreciate that just now.” Steve opens his mouth but Nat keeps going. “He knows where you are, and he knows the score. If he wants company, he'll ask for it.”

“I can’t just—“

“He asked for a favour,” Natasha says over him, and Steve stutters to a stop. He wants to say, _Anything_ because he would, hell, he probably even could. Anything. But… Natasha looks at Clint, bringing him into the conversation. “Our friend says there’s a 'Baron Strucker' doing some experiments in a facility in Sokovia. Something to do with controlling a couple of kids.”

Steve feels sick. He feels like he felt on the Cyclone at Coney Island, but there’s no getting off this ride.

“Jesus,” Clint whispers, angling toward her. “Kids? Like, little kids?"

“Control?” Steve asks at the same time Clint speaks. “Like what they did to Bucky?” He hears the way his voice rasps, as if its being dragged over something.

“I don’t know details, and neither did he,” Natasha answers. “But,” she tips her head. “I think that was a concern.”

Steve closes his eyes and his mind treats him to a memory of Asano, as vivid and sharp as any modern high-definition movie still.

Natasha clears her throat. “Our friend has a good idea of where the place is, and he asked if there was something we could do. A personal favour,” she adds, looking right at Steve.

Steve swallows. He remembers Bucky's hoarse whispers, his shivering limbs, the stomach-churning stench of the room, the cold dampness of Bucky’s clothes, and how, after all that, Bucky never slept again. Not really.

“You sure it’s good intel?” Clint’s question breaks Steve’s sickened reverie. Steve glances at Clint and sees that battered face fixed in an intense and careful expression. Steve has a body that might never die, but Clint is reminded of his unenhanced mortality every time he breaks a bone. Clint can smell trouble like nobody Steve ever knew, and he’s glad to have him here. Steve’s heart is too involved in this mission all ready.

Natasha, for her part, looks somewhere between mildly offended and mildly amused at Clint’s question. “I mean, did anybody else confirm it?” Clint clarifies.

Natasha purses her lips. “I haven’t shared this information with anyone else. This seemed… more suited to the Avengers than other teams. But I trust my source.”

Clint grunts an acknowledgement. He sits back in his chair, frowning. “Well, if Cap’s in, I’m in,” he says after a minute of consideration. He looks at Steve with a sideways glance, assessing, and doesn’t ask. And Steve nods, because, objectively, this is easy. He knows what the right course of action is. Bucky is okay. Well enough to want to rescue two kids who are in serious trouble. Hell, he trusts Steve and Nat enough to ask them to do it for him.

Honestly, Steve should be celebrating. Bucky is okay. He’s just fine.

Bucky is just fine without him.

Only...

_Ready to comply_

_Ready to comply_

_Ready to comply_

When he closes his eyes, he can see the curling Cyrillic text as if he's reading it off the paper.

“Steve?” Natasha asks quietly.

Steve comes back to the moment. The airless airport lounge, the coffee cooling in the paper cup in his hands, the susurrus of noise like the endless drone of seawater sighing against ice. Clint is watching him, expressionless.

“Steve,” Natasha says again. He looks at her and she points at a TV screen with her index finger. He looks. _New York to Bucharest NOW BOARDING._ “You’re going to miss your flight.”

He nods again and licks his lips. “Yeah,” he whispers.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The quinjet hums quietly. The weather is good, and the way over the Atlantic is easy. Out the window, day becomes night and the star-dashed sky glimmers and then it too fades away. Steve stretches out his legs and slumps a little into his seat. The quinjet is the most plush troop transport he’s ever experienced, and a nap would be not just welcome, but reasonably comfortable, too. There are berths in the back, but there's no reason to use them. Besides, he's used to sleeping upright in aircraft. He closes his eyes and folds his arms across his chest. He thinks about the mission, the rendering Jarvis produced for them of the base. The place seems too big for the number of people inside it. Tony has a plan for determining where the actual working lab it, but Steve wants to scour the whole thing. The whole thing reminds him of Asano; large and under-defended, with human experiments going on. He knows better than to leave doors unopened in a place like that. He never would have found Bucky if they'd just gone where the most people were. A nasty little thought maggots up into Steve's mind.  _Maybe he would have died there. Maybe that would have been better._

Steve shakes himself. _Stop it. It wouldn't have. And_ _Nat says he’s okay._ But his mind won’t shut off. The fact is, he's not sure he's on this mission because Bucky asked, or if it's because he's afraid to go to Bucharest and face him. _I'm respecting his choice,_ he tells himself, reaching for the solace Peggy once gave him. _H_ _e asked Nat for this. And before I knew what he had asked for, I told myself I would give him anything. It’s not what I wanted to give him but that's not what matters here._

Across from him, Sam peels off his jacket and puts it on backward, make-shifting a blanket. Steve’s about to say something but stops himself. Sam’s been an Avenger long enough to know there are plenty of blankets in the berths. The backward jacket isn’t about comfort, it’s about pre-combat ritual. Sam meets his eyes across the aisle and flashes a faint smile. Steve nods back, and closes his eyes, and his mind spirals down and down, into sleep.

 

_The place smells like the front lines after a hard rain, all rot and shit and rust. He doesn’t have to guess what they were doing here, he can see the evidence in row upon row of surgical tables, row upon row of tools on the walls. He knows it by the stinking drains like shell holes in the floor._

_Bucky is the only living thing in that freezer, in that slaughterhouse, in that nightmare place. Bucky grabs Steve’s uniform like he’s falling. His eyes come into focus and go out again. His skin is hot, too hot, impossibly hot. He must be burning up inside, even though he's shivering. When they’re out of there, and Morita gets his hands on Bucky, and gives him a once over, Bucky’s skin is still as hot and dry as like fresh-ironed clothes. Morita looks at Steve and grimaces._

_"I'm out of aspirin," he says._

_“It's okay, I’m okay,” Bucky says, and they allow him the lie because, Jesus, there’s nothing else they can give him, and he’s been through enough, hasn’t he? And Steve wants to burn the spars and ash that remain of the base, and he wants to salt the earth under it, too. He wants to destroy it so thoroughly that even the earth forgets it was ever there. He is looking at it from above, seeing an architectural rendering of all the strange little rooms. "That's the best I can do, sir," Jarvis says. Steve nods._

_"That's a lot better than nothing," Steve answers._

_“Yeah, thanks, Jarvis," Bucky says. He pats Morita on the shoulder and then gets to his feet and crosses the squelching ground to Steve. "I knew you’d come get me,” he says, and he's in front of Steve now, gripping the collar of Steve’s uniform, and on the table again. And none of it makes sense. Bucky couldn’t know he was in the area. He didn’t even know about the serum, about any of it. And they’ve already left this place, haven't they?_

_“I knew you wouldn’t just leave me behind,” Bucky says, that mud-smeared face losing all expression, those eyes looking right at him, as if Steve was a roadsign or a map, as if Steve was a piece of information, a thing. As if Bucky had never seen him before. “I knew you,” Bucky says. Oh Jesus, oh god. Steve’s chest clutches up. His guts, too. He can’t breathe. Bucky’s fucked up hand is twisting in Steve’s uniform collar, pulling, choking. Steve’s going under, and ice is flooding in._

_Bucky whispers, "Ready to comply ready to comply ready to comply."_

 

 

There’s a hand on his shoulder and Sam’s voice soft in his ear. “Hey, man. We’re just about there.” Steve jerks, blinks himself awake, disoriented and stunned. He looks around and takes in the padded quinjet seats, the low light and soft hum of the aircraft, the others are on their feet, checking weapons, pulling heavy vests and coats from lockers. _Sokovia._ _Right._ He sits up straight. _Head in the game, Rogers._

“You okay?” Sam asks in a voice that could easily be missed under the constant low drone of the engines.

Steve nods. “Yeah,” he croaks, and then, because this is Sam, he clears his throat and adds, “But I’ve had better naps.”


	4. Language

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel strongly having drowned and been frozen in a (possibly) unkillable body is likely to leave you with a bit of mental scarring. *pets Steve Rogers*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, what a lovely owl!" Cried the Wart.
> 
> But when he went up to it and held out his hand, the owl grew half as tall again, stood up as stiff as a poker, closed its eyes so that there was only the smallest slit to peep through - as you are in the habit of doing when told to shut your eyes at hide-and-seek - and said in a doubtful voice
> 
> "There is no owl."
> 
> Then it shut its eyes entirely and looked the other way.
> 
> "It is only a boy," said Merlyn.
> 
> "There is no boy," said the owl hopefully, without turning round.”
> 
>  
> 
> Which is all by way of saying: "There is no canon," said the author hopefully, without turning round.

 

Steve peels himself out of the quinjet chair and Sam gives him a sympathetic nod. “Nightmare?"

"Yeah."

"Bad rest is worse than no rest at all,” Sam opines. Steve musters up a smile, even if he doesn’t feel it, and nods. Then he follows Sam toward the midsection of the quinjet where the gear is stashed. The others are already there, busily preparing. “Bruce?” Natasha is asking, “is the Big Guy ready?”

“Yeah,” Bruce answers from where he’s toeing off his boots. “And sorry in advance.”

Nat waves a hand at Bruce in a non-verbal _never mind,_ and then looks at Steve. “Lullaby,” she says. Steve’s mind draws a blank for an instant before a piece of information bubbles to the surface. Bruce and Tony seem to have a good thing going, but the Big Guy is another matter all together. Last time they all worked together, things wound up a little too King Kong for Steve’s liking. But Natasha’s no Ann Darrow; she sorted it out, and now and Bruce have worked out a system. It’s… strange. But there’s nothing about any of this that’s what you’d call “normal”. Natasha looks at Steve, really looks. She not asking,  _Are you okay?_  but she doesn't have to.

“Right,” he says. “Lullaby.” It’ll be up to him to deploy the Widow to bring the Hulk down so the team doesn’t risk harm to the kids. They went through this _extensively_ after the King Kong incident. “Got it.”

He pulls open the locker where he suit and shield hang, and starts to change. Maybe the nightmare made him sweat; his shirt sticks to his skin, the collar tugs his ears as he pulls it over his head. Even his jeans seem to grip his legs and he feels like he’s peeling them off. The suit is just the same, he has to struggle to get it up over his hips. The sleeves and the harness for the shield are all tangled up.

 _All right boys and girls,_ Tony’s voice starts off in the cockpit and shifts over to the comms. _You're ready, right? I’m going out the sunroof. Jarvis, you’re on._

“Give us a sec, Tony,” Clint answers, pulling his quiver over his shoulder. “Not everybody goes to work in their footie pyjamas.”

_Hysterical, Barton._

There’s a roar of sound and a blast of cold air as Tony vacates the quinjet in his usual style.

Steve looks down at himself. They’re almost at their drop zone and he still hasn’t got his gear on. He turns his attention to the snarl of sleeves and leathers and works one of the leather straps free. The others seem to knot up even tighter. His big, blunt fingers can’t get purchase.

Steve pulls the other strap, and it snaps like crepe paper in his hands. “Oh _come_ on,” he whispers as the quinjet dips under his feet. They’re ready, and he’s holding them up. Steve fumbles with the leathers. If he can get the knot apart, he can rethread the strap and it’ll be good enough for now.

“What’s going on over there, Rogers?” Sam asks.

They are almost at the drop, he’s not ready. He _needs_ his suit. They don’t know what they’re facing, but that blast of cold air gives a hint of bone-aching cold alongside whatever horrors they’re about to witness. He can’t afford to tear his suit before the mission even starts. He needs to undo the knots. “Come _on_.” Tony’s exit has lowered the temperature in the quinjet by twenty degrees.

And it’s just like on the Valkyrie, when he woke, and found the arctic water had infiltrated the cockpit, was spraying through the seams of the windshield, was pouring in through the doors. It’s just like when he realized there was still air, still _time,_ that the sea would take the Valkyrie and the tesseract and _he could live_ if he just got out in time. But the broken cockpit pinned him into place like a butterfly stuck on some grotesque collection board. He pushed the weight of the console back, it wasn’t so hard. But the wires tangled him, and the parachute he had hoped to use before he knew he had to ditch the plane, and the pilot’s harness, and his suit, it all knotted around him, andthe oxygen canister provided for the pilot is hissing very softly, like a vicious whisper. He doesn’t want to burn to death, he has to be careful with the wires, and he needs his suit intact because without protection the water or the weather will kill him, and his big, stupid, clumsy hands—

“Trouble, Cap?” a voice that was not on the Valkyrie asks.

“I can get it,” Steve whispers. It’s just like then, when he talked himself through it, _Just be calm. You’ll get it._

“Cap?” that voice asks again, closer now. He registers Clint's quiet tenor, pitched extra-low.

Steve nods and then shakes his head. “No. It’s okay. I just have to…”He knows he should save his breath. All he can feel is the squeezing pressure, all he hears is hissing water and then, and then the groan and scream of metal giving way and the rush of water filling up his mouth and nose and if he tears off his suit he’ll die in the water and if he shorts the wires he’ll burn to death and he doesn’t want to burn to death he doesn’t he doesn’t _—_

“Steve?” someone asks, and Steve big, blunt fingers are _useless_ and he can’t get out, and the ocean is crushing the Valkyrie and the water’s flooding his mouth and his nose and it hurts and fire would have been better, and he’s drowning—

“ _Rogers_ ,” someone barks, “What’s the hold up?” 

Steve belts back, “I can’t get this _fucking_ _fucker_ to _fuck!_ ”

He looks up and realizes he’s nose-to-nose with Sam. The silence rings. He's holding the knotted straps in both hands, and he can hear himself panting over the quiet hum of the quinjet. Sam’s eyebrows go up just a fraction. “Well okay,” Sam says with a little nod. “So what do you want to do about that?”

Steve hasn’t got an answer. He tries to think of something, anything to say, and finally, “Fuck it,” he blurts.

Clint giggles like a ten year old. Sam tries real hard to suppress a grin. Behind Sam, Bruce stares, and his eyebrows have almost disappeared into his hairline.

“I have another solution,” Natasha says. She takes the knot out of Steve’s hands and works it apart with her nails, then adjusts one stretched-out strap so it will still do its duty and keep the shield in place. She makes it look so easy. 

"I have small hands," she says, as if she read his mind.

He risks a hangdog look at the others, who are all still staring back at him. “Sorry,” he says to all of them, and then, "Sam, I'm sorry about that."

Sam nods. "You can make it up by buying me burgers when we get back."

Steve nods back. Then, over the comms in his ear, he hears:

_Wait, was that… Cap?_

Steve sighs so hard it ruffles Natasha’s hair. He lets his shoulder roll like he's been shoved from behind. “That’s more like it," Natasha says. "You’re too tall anyway.” She finishes with the strap and pats it into place. 

_That was Cap, right? Guys? You guys heard that, didn’t you? Somebody say you heard it, too. Bruce?_

Bruce clears his throat and shifts from foot to foot. His eyebrows have come back down to normal levels.

“Yes,” Steve says into his comms. “Yes, it was me. I’m sorry.”

_That’s a… Look I never thought I’d say this but if Cap can’t keep his potty mouth in check things really have gotten out of control. I suggest swear jar. All in favour say Aye. Aye._

No one responds. There’s a tap tap tap noise on the comms like someone testing their mic.

_You guys can hear me right? Jarvis?_

_I hear you, sir._

“We hear you, Tony,” Natasha says. She looks from face to face. “What is a swear jar?”

“Uh, it’s an archaic Americanism,” Bruce says, about to go on but—

 _Just like Cap_ , Tony quips.

Sam snorts. Steve shoots him a dirty look and Sam tries to stifle that grin.

“It’s just a jar where you put some money any time you swear,” Bruce goes on.

“How do I not know about it?” Natasha asks. She looks at Clint, and she looks a little hurt.

“Clean living isn't exactly my thing,” he says.

Nat looks at Bruce. “What do you do with the money?”

Bruce shrugs out of his shirt. He’s the only one among them who is disrobing rather than bundling up for the fight. He folds his shirt and stows it neatly in the bag Steve will have on his bike. “You give it away. To a… a charity or a good cause.”

 _Or snacks._ Tony’s voice is so light that Steve can practically hear him grinning, _I might be the billionaire in this equation but since I’m putting up for the jet and making everyone look good, you guys should get the snacks. Personally, I’m thinking something crunchy. Oh, and, incidentally, we_ are _about to attack an evil baron’s base. Could we focus for a bit?_

Steve clears his throat. “Sorry for the distraction, Tony. I’m set now.”

Everyone takes another look at their gear. Steve slides his shield into place and squares his shoulders.

“Well, I’m in,” Clint says suddenly, out of nowhere. “For the swear jar, I mean,” he adds. He cranks the top off a beverage bottle that contains a vivid blue liquid, and starts to chug the contents. When the drink is almost gone, he comes back up for air. “What?”

“You?” Natasha and Sam say, both at the same time.

“Mr. "clean living isn't exactly my thing"?" Sam finishes.

Clint shrugs, gesturing with the bottle. “Maybe we should start watching our mouths. Aren’t we here to collect some kids?”

Natasha stares at him. “After everything they’ve gone through in that base, you’re worried about the effect of our bad language?”

Sam makes a small noise. He rolls his shoulders to settle the wings on his back. “I’m with Clint,” he says. “The best thing we can do for those kids is to try to make life normal for them again. That means treating them like kids right from the get go.”

Steve nods. “Sounds fair,” he says. He unzips his duffle, then pulls out his wallet and dredges up a five dollar bill. 

Bruce looks around the cabin. “We’ll need a jar,” he says.

“No prob.” Clint tips his head back and gulps the last of his lurid blue drink, then holds the bottle out to Steve.

“Okay, so, that’s disgusting,” Sam says, but Steve ignores him and stuffs the five dollar bill inside. Clint hands him the bottle and then fumbles around in his pockets until dredges up a few dollars and some change. He stuffs that into the bottle too. Then he grins at Steve's unasked question.

“Down payment on a big one,” he says. “I don’t like stuff that involves kids.”

Steve nods. He doesn’t know much about Clint’s past, but he knows that Clint has a soft spot for strays, and not all the kids at the farm are Barton blood. Clint looks at the two dollars and change he added to the bottle. “That’s probably not going to cover half of what I’m going to say.”

“There’s a standard rate?” Natasha asks.

“Well…” Bruce shrugs.

“Let’s say you get two cusses for that, and something small for the change,” Steve says. “I’ll keep track.”

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t think you should be the one setting the price _or_ doing the policing after your little outburst here.”

Steve is tempted to say something caustic but he’s out of cash for the swear jar. Besides, Sam’s right.

“Two dollars every time you say fuck,” Natasha announces, and puts a pair of dollar bills in the bottle. “All lesser swears a buck a piece, unless they modify the aforementioned f-bomb. Which means, Cap, you owe another five bucks or so.” Steve sighs and digs out another bill and stuffs it in. 

Nat squints as the bills, slowly absorbing the bright blue drink residue, and wilting as they do. “As long as those don’t go mouldy, we’re going to make some charity very happy.”

 _Or a bodega guy. I’m just saying. Salty. Crunchy. Also,_ guys _. Evil baron. Any time now._

“On our way,” Steve answers. “Jarvis?”

The quinjet doors grind open, and they’re out into the cold, the dark, heading for the castle.

Later on, when Tony says  _Shit!_  Steve says, "Language." He doesn't mean to, it's just that they've all agreed to watch their mouths. 

 _Wait. Is nobody going to comment on the fact that Cap said 'language'?_ Tony asks. 

Steve sighs. Nobody's holding the incident with the suit and the straps against him, but sure as shit sticks to your shoes nobody's going to let him forget the _fucking fucker_ incident either. All things being equal, it’s what he prefers.


	5. Interlude

Things have settled in the last week or so, ever since the big dust-up. Autumn hit Bucharest like a punch in the snout, turning all the green and gold of summertime in to blood-reds and bruise-browns seemingly overnight. One evening, Bucky went into his apartment at the end of summer, and the next day it was fall, and Obor Market had changed. Suddenly, Simon has acquired a pair of fingerless gloves that allow him to smoke unimpeded by the cold weather, and Milo has taken to wearing a jacket that looks like it was made from a sleeping bag while he tends the newspaper stall. Stalls and stands that had been selling tourist knick-knacks and baskets and picture frames have swept away their old wares and now they're selling dark green coats and boots, fedoras and trilby hats, and maps of the countryside. There are even tiny souvenir-sized versions of boar heads stuffed and mounted on miniature plaques. A few of the stalls are even selling guns, something that makes Bucky curiously uneasy. As if there haven't been guns in the market long before now.

People seem to be missing, too. Chekov and Maria spend all of their time behind the steamed-up windows of the restaurant, and Bucky hasn’t seem much of Olga. Yesterday, Constan mentioned he hadn’t seen her either, and he had a note of genuine concern in his voice. So, naturally, Bucky went over to the _Garden_ and knocked on the door of the apartment she shares with Maria and Chekov. And, after nearly three minutes, she answered.

“Oh, it's you,” she said.

He glanced at the shopping cart that stood in the corner of the hall, and she harrumphed softly. Then she limped from the doorway and disappeared. After a moment of hesitation on the mat, he stepped into the little apartment. He scanned the room. Left to right: closet, bathroom, hall, bedrooms, kitchen, dining. No sound except a soft grunt when Olga eased herself onto a kitchen chair. He stepped through the kitchen and into the little dining area. It had a half-wall that permitted a view into a sitting room with three much-used chairs all in a semi-circle around the TV. There was a tangled plant of some kind, and the walls were interspersed with pictures of family and icons of the saints, the red and gold glistening in the weak sun, as if the paint was still wet. He looked back at Olga. A small cup of black coffee sat on the plastic-draped table, next to a battered paperback book.

“I guess it’s better you did all your foolishness a week ago, when the weather was good.” She rubbed at her right knee. She _tsks_. “Maria’s useless with the groceries. All the tomatoes she bought were green. Hard as bowling balls.” She tapped a finger on the tattered cover of the book. He couldn’t see the title, but he could see the author's name.

“You like Agatha Christie?” he asked.

She scowled.

"I used to read them," he said. 

She moved her hand so he could read the cover, _The Mysterious Affair at Styles_.

Something bubbled to the surface of his mind. “Poirot?” he asked. "You like Poirot?"

“He’s a vain little creep,” she answered, inclining her head. “But he’s smart.”

“You like him.”

“He takes good care of himself. He's tidy. He reads."

Bucky nodded. “I’m going to the library,” he blurted. "I could pick the next one up for you."

Olga’s eyes narrowed just a fraction. Then she pointed to where a dozen mismatched magnets held little scraps of paper and appointment cards to the fridge. “Take my library card. The blue one there. None of that Miss Marple garbage,” she added.

“No ma’am.”

He took the card and pocketed it. 

 

*

 

So now he’s in the library, and the air smells like burning dust and old books, and the weak light is warbling in through murky windows, and standing in front of a long line of shelves interspersed by battered tables. His arms are full of Agatha Christie novels when he sees the display in the 900s — History. The banner above the display is of carefully cut paper, green paperboard on white, that reads _Read history - understand current events!_ There are about a dozen hardcover books standing cover-forward. His own face stares back at him from one of them.

Well, sort of.

Only he would know it is his face. His mouth and jaw are covered by the muzzle, his eyes are hidden under goggles. But Bucky recognizes it. It is the face that looked back at him on every mission, distorted in car windshields, in broken glass, in ice. A face glimpsed in rippling plate windows and in puddles. He hears himself swallow, realizes he’s walking toward the display only when he gets there. In stark white letters over the black muzzle is the book title: _Eternal Winter: On the trail of the Winter Soldier_. He sets down the other books and picks this one up. The photo is grainy, low quality, perhaps a still from a surveillance video some time ago. He recognizes the location: Dublin.

“Look at you, you poor bastard,” he whispers, and passes a thumb over the image of his muzzled, blinkered face.

“That’s a good one,” someone says. Bucky looks up, not sharply, no. He looks up slowly, and makes eye contact with a brown-eyed man wearing a dress shirt and pressed slacks and a name tag that says _Matei: Librarian_. “I just finished it. Petrescu is a very good writer, very convincing.”

“Convincing?” Bucky echoes.

“He’s got a pet theory that the Soldier is an American POW from WWII."

Bucky nods. “Sounds unlikely,” he says.

"It does, doesn't it? But…” he shrugs. “He has a lot of evidence. It works. Though, maybe it’s not your usual thing.” Matei nods at the stack of Agatha Christie paperbacks.

Bucky looks down too, and then back up at Matei. “I like a good mystery.”

Matei smiles. “Well, you might like it then. He really makes you feel for the guy, whoever he really is. And it’s just as crazy a page turner as anything Christie ever wrote. Nazis, Department X, Americans, even the Red Room. It’s got everything. And--” he taps the sign with one finger. "Topical."

Bucky tucks the book into the stack of paperbacks. “I guess so,” he says. He looks at Matei. “You read a lot of history?”

“Occupational hazard,” Matei laughs. “Looking for something?”

Bucky shakes his head, then changes his mind. “Yeah. Recommend something about Captain America."

Matei grins, already raising his head to look down the long line of stacks. “Oh, sure. He gets his own section over in 973, just over here. Robertson is excellent. Singh, too.”

Bucky leaves with two more books, plus a bag of paperbacks for Olga.


	6. Chapter 6

They say if you’re in a deep enough hole, when you look up you’ll see the stars.

That’s story Steve heard once when he was a kid, from a kid who knew a kid whose neighbour’s cousin had fallen into a well in West Virginia, and lived to tell the tale. They say it’s because the sides of the well block so much light that, to your eye, it’s as if it’s night time rather than daytime. That’s the story, anyway.

Steve knows its not true, pretty though the thought is. At the end there, when he got it, really got it, that the sea was going to swallow up his unkillable body, that he was going to drown and freeze perhaps forever, he looked up. _At least,_ he thought, _I might be able to see the stars._

Before New York got the way it is now, you used be able to see a few stars at night. Sirius, that was one. And there was another one, one Bucky had to tell him the name of over and over again. Venus, maybe. You could even see them in the daytime, if you just knew where to look. You didn’t need to be down a well for that.

Steve always liked the stars, the sight of them glimmering up there a reminder that there might be something more in the firmament, something godly, something otherworldly. Even later, lying in ditches and in trenches, beside the last winking embers of a fire, with the guys snoring softly all around, when he’d lost his faith in man and God, even then he liked looking at them. Sometimes he would to raise his hand and pretend to grab a fistful of them, as if he could pull all that distance and perfection down, and hold it in his hand. He and Bucky had talked about the Grand Canyon, maybe going there someday. _The stars, Stevie,_ he had said. _Imagine what the stars will be like._

There were no starry nights on the _Valkyrie_ , nor days, though it wasn’t as if he could tell the difference. Not usually. Usually it was only the hushing of the arctic as it caressed the hull of the _Valkyrie_ , and an endless, dull ache in his body that he learned to close his mind against. But sometimes the ice would falter, and the long emptiness of his hours would suddenly be punctuated by the wild pain of frost-chewed limbs, the screaming of his water-filled lungs. _Let me go,_ he’d think every time, not sure who he was thinking it to — God or Erskine, or the serum, or himself. _Just let me go._

There were no stars on the _Valkyrie_. Never. But here? It’s strange, but yes, there are. Even in the day.

This castle, once a statement of military prowess and now a renegade’s crumbling human-experimentation lab, it must have once been a home, too. Steve figures this because when he kicks through the set of double doors, he finds is a child’s bedroom. It's not sinister, or creepy. It just is. The floors are broken by frost heaves and feathered with ice. The draperies that frame the blank-eyed windows are white with rime. There is a heap of furniture pushed up to one side — a small, four-poster bed that has come apart and now sags against the wall, some miniature chairs, a low chest of drawers missing all but one drawer — nothing to remark upon. But the ceiling, the ceiling is still a vivid cobalt blue, and studded with small, gold stars that glimmer like the real thing under their gilding of frost.

He stops and looks. He would like to reach up, and touch them. He would like to see if the gold is raised, to see if this is fresco, or foil, or paint, and learn how it was done, and how it had managed to last here, perfect and shining, while everything else has rotted away. But they have come to this place to help others. They are looking for kids who are being held captive, experimented on. Bucky asked this. And if Bucky is even a shadow of the man Steve knew, he’s sick with the thought of it. He’s sick with knowing other people are suffering like he suffered. And here’s Steve, marvelling at the little, perfectly imperfect, hand-painted stars in the miniature firmament above a ruined bedroom floor. He's ashamed of himself, a little. It’s just, New York has gotten so big and so bright, and he hasn’t seen the stars in so long.

 

*

 

In the stairwell beyond the little bedroom, he finds Strucker, and while he’s asking how many experiments are in the castle, the second Enhanced finds them. She knocks Steve down hard enough that he goes down the stairs. It takes the wind out of his chest in a way that hasn’t happened since the 40s. Steve’s been in enough back alley fights to know you don’t let people get behind you, especially not if you don’t know how strong they are. She must be fast. She must be strong. He knows he needs to deal with Strucker so he is not distracted if the Enhanced returns. If she is anything like Bucky, Steve will be lucky to hold his own.

He remembers Bucky on the helicarrier. Empty at first, and then afraid, and then terrified, like an animal in a snare, like nothing Steve had never seen. Steve is facing Strucker, talking to Strucker, but he remembers Bucky’s fist coming down on him, breaking his cheekbone, smashing his head into the steel girding. And he remembers looking up at the face he loved, still loves, all that fear and anger and confusion and despairing. He remembers saying something, letting the shield fall. He remembers thinking, _I’d rather be dead._ He didn't want to drown, never had. But he was out before he hit the water anyhow.

Steve is talking to Strucker, but he remembers the letters Bucky sent him.  _Ready to comply, ready to comply, ready to comply._

He doesn’t mean to kill Strucker, it’s just that the shield requires finesse and Steve is fresh out.

 _Focus, jackass,_ he tells himself. That’s a human life and valuable intel lost forever. He touches the comms in his ear. “There’s a second enhanced in the field,” he tells the others.

He says _enhanced_ , because that was what was in the SHIELD sensitivity protocols. _Enhanced_ , not _mutant,_ which was, aparently, the previous term for it, probably right after _freak_.

Sounds like there are plenty of people in the world like him, now. There’s Bucky, there are these kids, at least two of them. And there’s a bunch more out in the world. Aparently there’s a big group in upstate New York. He got an invitation to come speak on “the mutant contribution to American’s role in the second world war” at a school for  _exceptional children_. Steve’s been meaning to get up there and meet this Professor X guy. Based on their letter, they like the term  _mutant_ just fine. But…

 _"_ _Enhanced persons may choose to call themselves “mutants”, however, Enhanced is the preferred nomenclature and all personnel are required to use the term “Enhanced” in all official matters."_ Steve spent a hell of a lot of time with that manual, learning all the new "preferred nomenclature". _Enhanced persons, firefighter, police officer, persons of colour, service member_ , _LGBQTA._ He remembers Clint’s wry smile when Steve stumbled over the acronym.

“You can say queer,” Clint said. They were in the tower, and Clint had taken over the couch. “For me, I mean. Some of the older ones don’t like it but it’s fine by me.”

Steve nodded, silenced by this. _Queer_. It stuck like a pin in him. 

Clint picked up the remote and aimed it at the TV, then shot Steve a sidelong glance. “What? You gonna ask if I take it or give it?”

Steve shook his head. “No.” He sounded almost breathless, even to himself. That was not what he wanted to ask. He wanted to ask, _how did you know?_ He wanted to ask, _How do I know?_

Clint nodded. “Good. It's bi, by the way. Don't go breaking the bad news about me being gay to Natasha. She'll laugh in your face.” Clint flicked channels on the TV like someone paging through a catalogue to get to the right section. “You like hockey?”

“No,” Steve answered, on solid ground for the first time in the whole conversation.

“Yeah, me neither. Look at these assholes.” 

Steve sat down beside him. 

 

*

 

“Another enhanced?” Clint asks over the comms. “You sure it’s not the same asshole as before?”

“Looks female,” Steve answers. And then, thinking of Bucky, he adds, "Do not engage."

“Copy that,” say a few other the others.

A moment later, Tony’s voice comes over the comms, grim and serious. “Guys, I’m in the lab. You need to get down here.”

Steve’s stomach knots. He does not want to get down there.

“On my way,” he says.

 


	7. Chapter 7

She gets into his head, the enhanced girl. She pulls out the loneliness and the high tension that leaves him primed like an explosive every minute of every day, what SHIELD doctors called PTSD and had protocols for. She shows him Peggy, beautiful and young, all her goodness, her strength, and her beauty. The woman he should have been crazy for, and did love, in his own way, but not like that, not how she deserved. And the others? The others just aren’t there. Not Gabe or Dum Dum or any of the Commandos. Not Bucky. As if they never made it through. As if they were all, already, forgotten. Alone, is what she shows him. Alone with a lie, and unable to be anything but a solider at war. He passes through it. It's unsettling, but it's nothing he's not already aware of.

The others don't get off so easily; Steve doesn’t have to have Tony’s brains to know she’s been in everybody’s head at one point or another. Natasha looks pale, Clint is sour-faced and silent, Sam sits apart from the rest of them, working steadily on his breathing. But Bruce is the worst of them. He sits in his chair in the quinjet and says nothing, only stares. Steve’s seen that before, he knows the sight of a man sunk deep in his own private hell. Steve keeps to himself and tries not to think about the sceptre they’re bringing home, and the two kids they are leaving in a snowy wasteland. By the look on Clint’s face, Steve’s not the only one.

“Even after that, you're upset about leaving them," Steve says quietly. Clint blinks and meets Steve’s eyes. "You can’t bring every stray home. Some of them don't want to come.”

At first Clint scowls, but after a moment the scowl softens and he shifts a little, shrugging and bobbing his head and fiddling with a hearing aid. “Yeah, well.” He sighs after a long while. “I guess you know all about it.”

Steve knows it’s not meant to be a blow, but he feels it in his gut anyhow. "How's that?" he asks, like an asshole.

Clint shrugs. "It's not like it's a secret that there's a stray you're interested in bringing in. Even I know that's too much for one person to handle."

Steve looks down at his hands and then up again. "Well, we'll see."

"For real?" Clint asks.

"What do I have if I haven't got hope?" Steve asks, forcing a grin. "Got space on the farm for a big one?"

Clint tips his head back and forth, like he's weighing the possibility that Steve might actually show up at Barton farm with a deranged ex-Hydra assassin in tow. "Call ahead," he says at last. Steve chuckles.

And that’s it for conversation until, hours later, when Steve’s phone chimes softly in his duffle. It dings once, and then again, and then a third time. He roots it out and takes a look. The texts are hours old, but that hasn’t staled the message:

Sharon: _She’s out of the woods! Going to see her now._

Sharon: _She loves the calla lillies. Sends her best. Says “stop spending a fortune at the florist” and “don’t do anything dramatic”. I told her it was probably too late._

Sharon: _She looks good, sounds strong. Pale still, and got tired pretty easy. AH RELIEF._

He grins. A weight he didn’t know he was carrying comes off his shoulders. Across the aisle, Bruce shifts a little in his seat. 

“Good news,” Bruce ventures in a soft and hopeful voice.

Steve nods. “Yeah. Finally.”

 

*

 

Tony takes charge of the sceptre and of Bruce, and honestly, Steve’s not sure what he’s more possessive about. He’s been meaning to ask Clint about that. Tony seems to be dating Pepper, but there’s no missing the affection he has for Bruce. It’s more than friendly or brotherly. Steve has a hunch Tony might be in love with Bruce’s brain, and he’s not sure exactly what any of that means. But it’s not really his business, and besides, Clint’s hardly in the mood to walk him through the parts of social life that the SHIELD sensitivity handbook didn’t cover.

Steve’s glad to step out of the tower and back into the streets of New York. New York is home. It mean routine. Means a shower and a shave. Means flowers for Peggy and an hour at her side. Means small talk with Sharon. Means a walk to the bodega where he rents the postal box. Means there’s nothing in the box, as per normal. Steve swallows down his disappointment. And then it occurs to him that he’s been keeping something back from Bucky, something Bucky should know. On the way back to his place, he texts Natasha.

_If I give you a package, can you get it to our friend?_

She must be looking at her phone at the moment he sends the text because an instant later, her reply comes in with a _ping_.

_Probably. A SMALL package._

_HOW small?_

_GDI,_ she answers. _Nothing bigger than a shoebox._

He pauses there on the street, lets people flow around him as if he was a stone for a moment, and then he is moving as if this is a mission, as if he knows his target is in range, as if this will save the world. He purchases: One thick sweater, warm gloves in navy blue and a knitted hat in black, and gets a shoebox from the department store clerk. Next he gets a map of the city, a pack of twelve postcards of “Old New York” that are unsettlingly familiar, half a dozen pens, and a small, plain, stationary set. He withdraws a hundred dollars from a bank machine and crams that in too. He’ll have to tape the box the way Bucky taped that letter together — as a replacement for structural integrity. If he does that, the box will hold. Just. Steve finds a quiet corner of a small cafe, bums a pen from the waitress, and writes the _to_ address on eleven of the envelopes in the stationary set. The twelfth he addresses _Bucky_. Then he takes a piece of the letter paper and sits in agony while his coffee gets cold. Finally, he writes:

 

_Bucky,_

_Hope this letter finds you well. Got your package two weeks ago. Meant to send a thank you right away but had no address to send to. ~~Want to~~ Been thinking about coming for a visit but will wait for an invitation. _

_Did that thing you asked. If it’s on your mind you can stop worrying about it now._

_Don’t know if you heard that Peg’s in NY. She's been sick but she’s doing better now._

_The new place is nice. Hot water and good light, just like we talked about. ~~Wish you’d~~  Got spare room if you drop by. _

_Steve_

 

He stares at the page. He wants to write the truth, _are you all right, what did those letters mean, where are you, can I see you, please I want to see you._ He could come apart in that letter, but God knows Bucky's in no shape to hold Steve up right now. So he doesn't. Instead, he calls up Google translate on his phone, and rewrites the whole thing in Cyrillic. When he’s done, his throat’s so tight he has to clear it to say, _No, thank you_ , when the waitress asks if he wants more coffee.

 

His phone chimes just as he’s setting it down, and he picks it up again.

 

Tony has texted, _Avengers, Assemble._

 

A mission. Thank _Christ._ Steve packs up the box, and heads for the tower.

 

But the joke’s on him. It’s not a mission. It’s a party. It’s a party and Steve has never felt less in the mood to party, he isn’t going to even take off his coat, not at first. But then Natasha takes the box off him, and Sam signals from the mezzanine. He's holding a pool cue and even from this distance, Steve can see the barely-concealed excitement in Sam’s face. Steve heads up the stairs to see what that’s all about, and when he gets there, he would swear if it wouldn’t cost him five bucks. Tony knows him too well. He’s stacked the joint with members of the 617th Squadron, RAF, who are Stateside for a special event.

"It's the Dam Busters," Sam whispers, hurrying over to him. "And they brought some friends."

Steve can't help staring past Sam, at the smug grins on the elderly faces. "Take a picture, it'll last longer," one of the old guys says and the rest crack up.

"Sorry," Steve says, stepping over and offering a hand. "Just surprised. Steve," he adds. "And, I guess you've met Sam?"

"He's already in the hole twenty bucks," says another of the old guys, chalking his pool cue. "Care to try to even the score?"

Steve and Sam exchange a glance. Sam's says  _C'mon, man,_ and Steve's says,  _I can't shoot pool for shit._  They go down another twenty, but it's worth every penny.


	8. Interlude

It’s a Thursday morning and Bucky’s breath is hanging in the air as he helps Simon unload tray after tray of bread. He’s busy hauling the huge trays down from the rack, not thinking of anything except keeping the loaves from sliding around and squashing each other when he realizes Maria is watching him work. He glances over as he hauls another tray down for Simon. She smiles at him, and hefts a shopping bag that’s hanging from one arm,  _This is for you._ He nods and passes the last tray to Simon.

“Good,” Simon says around the flattened, extinguished cigarette clamped between his lips. “And that’s it for Obor.” Simon pulls the door back into place. He slides the lock back onto the tailgate, too, but doesn’t bother to click it closed. Then he takes out his wallet and counts out a few bills. Bucky takes them with a nod.

“You’re gonna freeze to death if you don’t get a better place this winter,” Simon tells him as he pays out the money.

Bucky shakes his head, but people are leaving the old apartment building in force now. Elena and Marta moved into Josh’s place last week because of the cold and now Bucky is now the lone resident on the second-to-top floor of the Rose. But he’s not going to freeze to death.

“I’ll be okay,” he answers.

Simon looks like he might say something, maybe ask Bucky what he’s going to do with the money he’s been making doing odd jobs around the market, but he keeps that question to himself. Old habits die hard.

“Tomorrow?” Simon asks instead.

Bucky nods.

“Good. Same time.” Simon slaps Bucky's shoulder, and then clambers up into his truck and revs the engine so hard it rattles. Maria glances up at the truck.

“You need that serviced,” she calls up to Simon.

“Bah,” Simon answers. He waves at them both and the truck heaves out into the street.

Maria gives Bucky a strange little smile and hefts the shopping bag again. “This came to the restaurant yesterday,” she says. “It’s for you.”

Bucky goes very still. Maria opens the shopping bag and pulls the cardboard box out. It’s taped all over with clear packing tape, and the _from_ address is somewhere illegible, and the _to_ address is the restaurant’s, with the words: _Attn: The American_ handwritten below the printed label. He frowns. Maria hands it over to him, and then smiles. “Olga says to tell you we’re not a post office.” Then she leans forward and whispers, “but it’s fine. She’s hardly there in winter. She’ll never know.” And with that and a grin, she starts off toward her shop.  

 

Bucky takes the box up to his apartment. It would be smarter to open it in the market, in case it’s a bomb or a trap of some kind, so the energy can dissipate. But that’s something the Winter Soldier would do. Bucky, on the other hand, wants it away from civilians and friends, even if it has to be opened in an enclosed space. He takes the stairs two at a time, then shoulders through his door, already gripping the lid of the box and tearing it open as he does.

Things spill out. A pair of gloves go sliding across the beat-up floor. A slim box of postcards lands with a slap and breaks open beside them. Pens go rolling in every direction. Something black, something blue, a box, an envelope. Bucky sets the box down on the counter and inspects the debris. A sweater. A hat. A box of stationary with every envelope addressed to a post office box in Steve’s careful hand. Except for the envelope that says _Bucky_ on the front.

He’s got that one torn open before he even thinks about it. A US c-note comes spilling out, along with a single sheet of paper, written on both sides. He reads the English first, and then turns the paper over and stares at the Cyrillic. And stares. And keeps on staring. Because it's Cyrillic, sure, but the text is garbage. It doesn't mean a damn thing. None of it. And then…

Bucky laughs. 

Steve was an artist and the letters are perfect, but the sentences make no sense. As if they've been run through a translator. Piecemeal.

“What the hell, Stevie?” he whispers, looking at the train-wreck of Russian on the page. And then it comes to him, and he stops laughing. He was in Russian hands a long time. It's reasonable for Steve to wonder how his English is these days. Bucky frowns. But didn’t they have a conversation — for some definitions of “conversation” — on the Helicarrier? Bucky’s not sure of much these days, but he’s pretty sure that all happened in English. And based on this sample, it sure wasn't in Russian. 

He shakes his head and laughs again, then helps himself to one of the stationary set papers and writes, _Your Russian is TERRIBLE you mook. Stick to English. Best to Pegs._ He folds it, stuffs it into the envelope, and then pauses. After a moment, he pulls the paper out again, and smooths it gently on the scuffed yellow countertop. He turns the page over and on the clean side, he writes:

 

 _Steve_ ,

_Thanks for the package._

_Let me know if the kids are all right. They don’t know me from Adam, but I got an interest._

_Sorry about your old place. Glad your new place suits. I wish I could see it too._

 

He hesitates, pen hanging over paper for a long while, and never does write the other thing he's thinking about, just signs it  _B_ and folds the letter up again. Then he takes the sealed envelope down to Milo’s newspaper stall, gets postage, and drops it in the mail himself.


	9. Chapter 9

It goes badly, so badly. Sokovia is an unmitigated disaster. Steve knows all about collateral damage. He knows about Dresden and Stalingrad. He knows about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He knows. But this is peacetime, and it shouldn’t be like that.

When they come back, there’s trouble in New York, and not the kind they can solve. “I’ve got a place upstate,” Tony says before the Quinjet even lands. The press is camped out in a circle around the feet of Avengers Tower, there are helicopters everywhere. “Who needs a vacation?”

Steve nods along with the others. Wanda, sitting far away from the rest of them, is the only one who doesn’t respond to Tony. Steve moves to the back where she’s sitting, where there’s a little table and the bulkheads contain rations of water and energy bars and dried fruit and things. Near to the cargo compartment, where it is cold, and the body of her brother is lying covered by in bedding stripped from one of the bunks. Steve takes a package of dried blueberries and a bottle of water from the bulkhead, and then offers another bottle of water to her. She flashes a perfunctory smile before she takes it from him. He sits down in the booth, not too close, and not exactly opposite her.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She shakes her head.

He opens the blueberries and eats a few, considering. Finally, he offers some to her. She looks him in the eye. And he knows she’s been in his brain, he can’t blame her for being surprised. 

“You should probably eat something too,” he says. As if that’s all there is to it.

She cranks the top off her water bottle and takes a drink instead. When she’s finished drinking, she looks at him again, turning to apply the full force of those unsettling eyes. “You wouldn’t break bread with an enemy.”

He nods. “You got that right.”

She takes a blueberry between forefinger and thumb and looks at it. “Strange looking bread.”

“It’s that or mango slices,” he answers, glancing up at the bulkhead.

Then she nods toward the front where the seats are, specifically, at the back of Clint’s head. “Why does he care so much?”

Steve looks into the package of blueberries. “He just does. He’s the only non-enhanced one on the team. Maybe that makes him care more.”

“Maybe it’s actually his special power,” she says.

He grins at the blueberries.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“Not sure,” Steve admits. “Tony’s got some kind of… retreat. Somewhere away from the media. It’ll give you a chance to get your feet.”

She shakes her head again, then sits back against the soft grey padding and sighs. “I am… I am beginning to remember.”

He looks up, and waits.

“I _thought_ we were all together, eating, when the shell hit. And the second shell, the one that didn’t go off. And my parents falling into the hole. But now…” she shakes her head, looking at him as she does, as if she is anchoring herself on him. “But there is this other memory, like a dream. An old woman and a caravan, and the smell grandmother frying the paprika. Before the men came. We were just children, Pietro and me.” She goes very still, and Steve hold his breath. “I know how to get into people’s minds. I know how to change what they perceive. These two memories, they can’t both be right. And the longer I go, the more I can smell the paprika, and the less I remember my mother and father’s faces.”

Steve can hear himself swallow. He wishes Sam were here beside him, with all his training and his skill.

She leans forward then, eyes searching his. “Did my brother die believing in something that wasn’t true?”

“I don’t know,” Steve whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” she answers, and her voice is quiet and strong; she is stating a fact. She sits back, then, and eats the blueberry.


	10. Chapter 10

Tony’s place upstate is a big old stone pile painted an inconspicuous salmon pink with a brass plaque that reads “Customs and Tax Museum” our front, but Steve doesn’t discover that until the afternoon of the next day.

  
“Keeps people away,” Tony says when Steve asks about it. “Lots of people live part time out here. Xavier’s school’s just up the road in an old sugar baron’s house.”

  
“But a museum?” Steve asks.

  
Tony shrugs. “Those were the terms. Dad wanted the place and the neighbors were worried about it. So they came to an agreement.”

  
The front of the house really is a Customs and Tax Museum with a couple cheerful, aging docents who run the tours and the desk. It’s been restored and now looks exactly like it did in 1731 when the British built the place. The back of the property, on the other hand, shows evidence of Howard’s touch everywhere - in the airstrip, the pool, the solarium, the atrium, the tennis courts, the stables. It’s too cold to swim, but the stables are dim and calm and the horses nibble at his palm and accept Steve’s murmured nonsense and his patting with good grace.

 

He’s not really surprised when he looks up to find Wanda at the other end of the stable. She’s been out, the horse she’s with is leaving gusts of vapor in the air, and if a horse could smile, Steve’s pretty sure she’d be doing it.

  
He walks over to Wanda, hands in his pockets. She’s unsaddling the horse with deft hands.

  
“You know how to ride,” Steve says, more to announce his presence than for any other reason.

  
Wanda looks across the saddle at him. “I am starting to remember horses.”

  
Steve nods. He reaches over to help but she shakes her head, so puts his big hands back in his pockets. “I, uh.” He’s not sure exactly what he wants to say, what he’s trying to do. “There’s a private school not far away. I’m feeling a bit stir-crazy. They sent an invitation to me before... everything.”

  
Wanda’s eyes get bright. “You’re getting out of here.”

“Just for the day.”

  
She grins.

 

*

 

They take one of the cars parked in the spacious garage. It is low and sleek and all angles. Midnight blue, with a bull on the badge on the front. It drives like a greased pig but Steve gets the hang of it. He even likes the Lancaster Bomber sound of the engine.

With Wanda as copilot, and Vision in the car’s computer system to act as navigator, they find their way through the little town, to a small, tidy sign that reads School for Gifted Children.

There is a long drive, flanked by tall oak trees. A green sward runs down to the high stone wall with the autumn-bare crowns of trees just showing above. Finally the drive pools out before a stately portico. There’s no indication of where to park, so Steve pulls over as far as he can and kills the engine.

  
“Must be nice to go to private school,” Wanda says, looking at the building.

  
“No kidding,” Steve answers.

  
They share a grin and then get out, and climb the three broad stone steps to the enormous double doors where a small brass plaque reads, VISITORS PLEASE CHECK IN. Steve holds the door open, and Wanda steps through.


	11. Chapter 11

Steve is accustomed to people looking at him, even staring at him. Way back when it was usually because he was the skinny, weedy guy with a too-big nose hanging around the big, dark-haired handsome guy. Then it was because he was a showpiece for the Allies. These days it’s because he’s a super. Being stared at is the background noise of Steve’ss everyday.

But it’s not usually like this.

The foyer of the grand old house is carpeted and wood panelled and there are two huge swooping staircases and all those spaces are cluttered with kids rushing with books and bags. When Steve and Wanda step through the doors, he hears someone say, “That’s Captain America,” and a hush falls over the bustle. The kids stop where they stand, and stare at him. Not like he’s a celebrity or the living embodiment of an action figure or something. No. They stare at him like he’s a large, stray dog that’s wandered into their midst. Might be friendly, might bite. Steve opens his mouth to speak but—

“What is going on out here?” Asks a woman, emerging from the hallway. Steve takes her in at a glance. She’s lean and strong, white hair, dark skin. “Hello,” she says, nodding at Steve and Wanda. He can’t help notice how she moves, brisk but not running or aggressive. You’d never notice how she gets between him and the nearest group of kids unless you were trained to see that kind of thing. Steve can’t help wondering if maybe they’ve had some kind of trouble recently. And maybe she thinks he might be bad news.

“We, um,” Steve begins and then clears his throat and addresses the woman in particular, but the room in general, too. “Sorry to arrive unannounced. I’m looking for a Professor X. He sent an invitation.”

“Ah,” says a voice from the other hall. “You made it.”

Steve turns toward this new voice. The man is fifty if he’s a day, seated in a wheelchair. He's handsome now, and Steve figures he must have been something else in his youth. Behind him is a man that reminds Steve strongly of Bucky. A few days worth of beard growth, hair long left uncut, dark and hooded eyes. He’s short, though, stocky. He doesn’t glare, exactly, but Steve has the sense that, in spite of the lack of visible scars, this guy is a brawler. 

“Professor,” the woman says. “I didn’t know we were expecting company.”

“Sorry,” Steve answers. “I should have called ahead.”

She gives him a strange look, then nods at the kids. “Chemistry. Now.”

They file meekly in the direct she points, and she follows them out of sight.

The Professor comes into the foyer. “We’ve been hoping you’d make it, Captain Rogers.”

Steve smiles. At last, he knows what to do. “Please, call me Steve.” He offers his hand and the Professor shakes it. The guy standing behind the Professor makes no move to trade grips. That’s fine by Steve.

“I’m sorry to drop in like this,” he says. “As it happens, I found myself in the neighbourhood.”

The professor inclines his head, and then looks at Wanda.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.”

When Wanda stays quiet, Steve steps in. “This is Wanda. She’s... a friend.”

The Professor smiles as if he understands, intuitively, all the unspoken things that hedge Steve’s uncertainty with that word. The guy behind the professor folds his arms across his chest.

“Indeed she is,” the professor says. He glances up at the guy behind him. “And this is Logan, one of the teachers at the school.”

Steve nods at Logan and gets a nod in return. The professor turns his wheelchair.  “Why don't you come in? My office is over here.”

Steve keeps pace with the wheelchair, and Wanda follows after. Logan walks behind.

“This is a very strange school,” Wanda says suddenly. Steve glances at her, and then at what she’s looking at. A group of kids are walking across a winter-browned lawn toward another building, and behind them, a latecomer goes hurrying to catch up. At first Steve thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him, but they’re not. She’s running through doors. And walls. And pillars. And hedges. Until she catches up and then walks, like the rest of them, toward class.

“It is a school for gifted children,” the professor answers. “Any gift is welcome here. Including yours.”

She jolts as if he’s zapped her.  He glances up at her and nods, and then, as if he merely confirmed he prefers butterscotch to caramel, he leads the way into a spacious, comfortable study, complete with a wide desk, a fireplace, leather chairs, and a view of the grounds.

“Please, have a seat.” He's every inch the courteous host, b ut now Steve’s uneasy. A newspaper lying on the seat of one of the leather chairs reads DISASTER IN SOKOVIA. This Logan guy is watching them like a goon on the docks, just waiting for his boss to give the OK. And he has the advantage of knowing about Steve, whereas Steve's got nothing on him.

Steve looks at the Professor and indicate the newspaper with his chin. “Is something going on here?” 

The Professor looks from Steve to Wanda and notes that neither of them are sitting. He smiles a benign, small smile. “Well, given that the ninth grade students are long past World War II in the history curriculum, and that you brought a guest, I thought perhaps you came here for help.”

“Help?” Steve asks.

Wanda sinks down into a chair. She is staring at the Professor, eyes locked on his. “Yes,” she says quietly.

The Professor’s eyebrows go up just a fraction. Logan shifts where he stands, and his shoulders soften just a hair. 

The Professor looks up. “Yes, well. Perhaps, Logan, you could show Captain Rogers the memorial garden.” He nods at Steve. “It’s the one you can see through the window here.”

Logan meets Steve’s eyes and there’s no “perhaps” about it. They’re going, or it’s going to be a fight.

“Wanda?” Steve asks. She looks up at him and nods. He pushes down a question, disquiet, and exhales through his nose.

“This way, bub,” Logan says, shouldering past him. 

Steve follows.

 

*

 

Neither of them take a jacket, and it seems to Steve that the cold doesn’t bother Logan either. They walk in the garden just outside the Professor’s office window, and when Steve looks in, he can see Wanda speaking, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

_She’s fine,_ he tells himself. _Hell, she can look after herself without me_  He tries to focus on the little bronze plaque affixed to of a sculpture of a helmet and bayonet.

“Memorial garden,” he says, trying to break the silence stalemate.

“The place was a hospital in the First World War,” Logan answers. Steve looks at him, really takes the measure of the man. That fighter’s physique, the absence of scars. Those wary, calculating eyes.

“What do you teach?” Steve asks.

“History.”

Steve snorts. He can’t help himself.

“Sometimes," Logan appends. "And sometimes I teach phys ed when the kids are being little shits.”

“So that'd most of the time."

Logan laughs. “You got that right.”

They grin at one another for a second in the cold, still air. Steve can can hear kids yelling and the sound of a ball being bounced on concrete somewhere not too distant.

Steve nods. “I’m sorry if we worried you when we showed up unannounced.” He ventures. He nods in the direction of the sounds. "I guess, with Enhanced kids, there's always a chance strangers mean trouble."

Logan nods. “I wasn't sure if you were looking for a fight.” He looks Steve up and down. “It's already been a hard week.”

“Tell me about it.”

Steve expects a grin but Logan gives him a long, appraising look. Steve avoids his eyes. Instead he looks at Wanda, where the Professor is leaning forward to touch her face with both hands. “She’s has it the worst,” he murmurs. "Lost everything. Even her brother."

Logan looks too. “The Professor’ll look after her.” His voice is quiet, the hard lines of his face softened a little in sympathy.  “He's got practice. Seems like they always go after the kids.”

Steve nods. It does.

Logan looks at him again.  “How old were you when they did that to you?”

Steve forces himself to grin when he looks down at himself. “Well...”

“Nineteen? Twenty? Did you actually ask for that? Because that’s what they say.” Logan is looking at him, really looking now. Like he’d peel Steve and read his insides if he thought he could.

“I, uh. It's true. I did volunteer.” 

“Volunteer, huh.”

“Yeah. Stupid," he says quietly. "And young.”

“They always go after the kids. Even the good guys."

Steve spreads his hands. "I guess so."

Logan nods, not like he got what he wanted, but like he already knew the answer. 

Steve looks back at the window. The Professor is sitting at his desk, alone, as if Wanda had never been there. It falls like ice into Steve.

“Where is she?” He doesn’t actually stick around to hear the answer. Instead he marches back inside, and makes the office door before Logan has a hand on his arm.

“She’s resting,” the Professor answers, calm, unruffled.

“I’d like to see her.” That’s what he says, but the tone makes it sound like, _you fucking viper_.

The Professor opens and closes his mouth and then smiles. “Of course. Up the stairs to the left. She’s in the library. It's all right Logan. I'm sure Captain Rogers can find his way.”

Steve shakes his arm out of Logan’s grip and heads for the stairs.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no cannon

She _is_ resting, and Steve is equal parts relieved and embarrassed, with a niggling dash of an all-new anxiety, because Wanda is sitting on a small, green couch, with her head thrown back and her hands pressed to her eyes, and her face streaked with tears. She is crying hard enough that her shoulders shake and her exposed neck convulses, but she’s not making any sound. There’s no one else in the library. It’s small, he can take the whole thing in at a glance: a single table, four chairs, newspaper rack, and this couch alongside the shelves and shelves of books. He closes the door and says Wanda’s name. She peers out from under her hands.

“I remember,” she says. She sniffles and takes a few gasping, shuddering breaths. Then she flutters fingertips against her face, as if she’s trying to find a way to put the tears back in. “My grandmother. My mother and father. _Pietro._ ” She’s physically smiling, but in the way marathon runners sometimes smile as they near the finish line; something closer to a a threat display than joy. “I know what happened when they came for us. What really happened to us. What happened in after. He’s alive.”

He smiles for her, the way he smiles for Peggy when she slips out of time, and returns with a crash, and sees Steve again for the first time. “Yeah?” he asks.

“He’s alive, Steve.”

He nods, not sure of what to do, what to say. Pietro’s body is in the quinjet, covered by a blanket, waiting for burial. “That’s… that’s great news.”

“No,” she answers, palming the tears off her face. Her voice is firm again, strong. If Steve couldn’t see her, he’d have no idea she had been crying. “No, it’s not. It’s terrible. But you still don’t know.” She points to a small rack of newspapers hanging near a table. “You see the headlines?”

Steve looks over and then back at her. “ _Disaster in Sokovia,_ ” he says. He doesn’t need to read again.

“And the lede, under the headline. What does that say?”

Steve goes to the rack and looks at the paper. “ _Thousands injured as Avengers face down new threat._ ”

She smiles that feral smile again. “Does it?”

He looks down and checks. Yeah. That’s what it says. He looks back at her and reminds himself. Captivity, combat, the death of a loved one. He should never have brought her here. “Wanda, I think it’s about time we were getting back to Tony’s—“

She puts up one hand. “No. Not yet. Just do one thing for me: Take that paper out into the hall. Ask someone to read it to you.”

Steve frowns.

“Please,” Wanda sits forward. She looks like herself again, calm and in control. “Ask a few people.”

He hesitates. There’s something deeply screwy going on here. He knows Wanda can handle herself, but she’s vulnerable right now, and he can't help but wonder if the Professor did something to her. But it’s such a stupid little request. It's easy. He'll just do it and then get her out of here. “Okay," he agrees. "And after this, we’re going.”

She nods.

He takes the newspaper as instructed, and goes out into the hall. Coming up the stairs is the girl he saw running through walls not all that long ago. “Excuse me,” he calls, and tries not to feel stupid. “Can you tell me what this headline says?”

She glances at the paper. “ _Disaster in Sokovia,_ ” she says, and then, as if making a decision, she lifts her chin and looks him dead in the face. _“Thousands injured as Avengers destroy a city.”_

Steve goes numb. He’s aware of the girl watching him, her weight shifting to her back foot like she’s ready to sprint for the nearest hard object and pass right through it if he makes a grab for her. That expression on her face, just like the expression on the kids in the foyer when they arrived. Like the teacher who got herself between him and the students. Like Logan’s wary presence. His body feels weightless, suspended in ice. And his brain feels like it’s detecting the edges of something massive and terrible. _Oh, Jesus. What is going on here?_

“You want me to read the rest?” the girl asks.

“No,” Steve whispers. He starts down the long, swooping staircase to the foyer. Before he makes it to the final stair, Logan appears at the door of the Professor’s office. Steve meets his eyes.

“What happened in Sokovia?” he asks quietly.

Logan sighs. “You did, bub.”

 

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BUCKLE UP  
> I don't know how many of you are going to come along for this ride but, PSA, the gas pedal is stuck to the floor.

Logan steps aside, and Steve goes into the Professor’s office. The Professor is still behind his desk, hands resting on the buffed wood, fingers interlaced. He looks small, not frail exactly, but not imposing either. Still and calm, a man utterly self-possessed. Steve, on the other hand, feels like his insides are made of broken glass. There is a weight in him that drags, and though the room is quiet, he finds himself unwilling to speak. Instead, he sets the newspaper down. No matter how he looks at it, the headline remains the same: _Thousands injured as Avengers face down new threat._ But he can't shake the bad feeling he's got. Something's not right, he just can't tell what.

Steve puts his hands flat on the desk top, and looks at the Professor. “What’s going on here?”

The Professor glances past Steve. Near the door, Logan grunts, as if the Professor said something. Then Logan steps out of the room, and pulls the door closed behind him. The Professor draws a deep breath, smiles, and gestures to the seat he rejected earlier. Steve sits, fingers tightening on the newspaper, a part of him wishing for the solid weight of the shield under his hands.

“Captain Rogers,” the Professor says in a kindly sort of voice, “the Avengers, or a group of people who look very much like them, have been involved in a number of violent attacks in a number of cities around the world. First in a Johannesburg shipyard, and then downtown Seoul, and most recently in Sokovia. No one knows why.”

“Ultron,” Steve says softly. “There was a…” he takes a moment to compose himself. He has to be careful about what he says; no one should know about the sceptre. “Tony was working on a program to protect humanity but something went wrong. There was this huge machine, Ultron. It went after people. An arms dealer in South Africa, and Dr Helen Cho, in Seoul.”

The Professor’s expression is neutral, a mask. Steve wants him to understand.

“We tried to take it down. We wanted to keep it away from people but it was too fast and too strong. And when we did catch up in Sokovia everything… everything went wrong. I’m not proud of what happened,” he adds softly. “I know innocent people died. But we had to do something.”

The Professor takes a breath and folds his fingers together.

“Steve, I would like to help you, if you’ll permit me.”

Steve spreads his hands. “How?”

“We all have gifts here,” the Professor answers. “And mine are… cognitive. If you allow me to, I’d like to see if the same veil that was over Wanda is over you as well.”

Steve sets his jaw and nods. The Professor reaches out, and touches Steve’s temple with one cool, dry hand. And Steve…

 

…Is standing in the starry bedroom in Strucker’s castle, looking up at the hand-painted stars. He is aware that the Professor is standing beside him and feels he should explain.“I wanted to know how they did it,” he hears himself say in the airless chill. “It looks like fresco to me but it’s too dark to really tell.”

“Yes,” the Professor’s voice is soft. His mouth moves, but his breath doesn’t hang in the air like it should. “But why were you there in the first place?”

He is aware, dimly, that he should keep his mouth shut, lie, say something else, anything, but he thinks the name and it strikes a spark in him, and

there are hands on his hips, gripping his bare ass, and Bucky’s mouth, hot and eager, on his, and

Bucky’s voice, _So sweet for me, Stevie,_ and Steve turning over on hands and knees for him,

an apartment, wood floors, good light, an easel near a window, the sound of a shower running and warm steam billowing

A soft tenor singing in the kitchen, the smell of coffee

And

There is ice. All around him. Squeezing and crushing. Killing and killing again. He can hear the hull of the Valkyrie scream when the ice presses too hard. He closes his eyes and goes back to

the apartment, the good light, the hot mouth, the billowing steam, the warm hands, _so sweet for me, Stevie,_ and all the other fantasies that kept him sane. And with the acknowledgement of the fantasies comes the hard edge of the truth: The creature stalking streets and rooftops in DC, the man on the Helicarrier, the letters, _god_ , the broken, shattered, scattered letters. And, at last, this request.

The Professor smiles faintly. “Because he asked you to.”

Steve couldn’t lie even if he wanted to. This has already happened, it is in the past. The Professor is in his head, and there is no place to hide. “Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.”

“I see.” The Professor nods. “What happened next?”

Steve moves. He passes through the bedroom and goes into the stairwell beyond. And now the memory seems superimposed upon itself, like an errata pasted over the original text. He looks at the Professor.

“Take your time.”

Steve looks back at the memory. Strucker is standing there, lit like some vaudevillian caricature of a baddie in a Bowery show. Steve hears himself ask how many experiments are in the castle, but he can’t pay attention to it, not with the memory peeling up at the edges. He reaches down and tugs gently on the corner of the scene. It peels away as if it was only just pasted down and the glue is still wet. Underneath, it is the same stairwell and the same theatrical light, but it’s not Strucker. It’s a little man, wizened and brittle, with hands that grip an iron-shod stick, and a bright gold band on one finger.

“Focus,” the man says in a voice that surprises Steve with its strength and command. He rubs that burnished ring as he speaks. “Captain, focus. Do I have your complete attention?”

“Yes,” he hears himself say. He is aware of lowering his shield, and his body growing slack.

“Excellent, good. Now, tell the others you have Strucker, and then help me down the stairs to the laboratory. I would like to address all of you at the same time.”

Steve takes the old man’s weight, his delicate, bird-like bones. He helps the old man down each stair, into the lab, to where the others have gathered around Tony, and the sceptre.

“Very good,” the old man tells him, and then turns his eyes, his ring, his voice, on the others. “I ask you all to focus on me.”

They turn, of course they do. And they focus, naturally. And Steve is aware, suddenly, that this is how it was done. All of them at the same time. Everyone in the room.

“The man’s name is Johann Frenhoff,” the Professor says quietly. “He is a hypnotist with a mutant gift. You have already seen his handiwork.”

Steve knows without asking the Professor means Bucky. That blank incomprehension, that fear and confusion. The things he did. 

“Frenhoff’s work only holds until his subjects catch a glimpse of the truth,” the Professor says quietly. “The more people shake him off, the faster the false memories dissolve, and the less power he’ll have over the group. You’re all well on the road to recovery.”

 

When Steve comes back to himself he’s breathing hard, hands on knees, still seated in the chair opposite the Professor. “Steve,” the Professor’s voice is very soft. “Can I get you something?”

Steve would like a glass of water to wash the taste out of his mouth, he would like a stiff drink if it would do anything. He grips his knees. “I need to make a phone call.”

“Of course.” The Professor starts toward the door. “I’ll ask Logan to look in on you in ten minutes.”

Steve fumbles his phone out of his pocket with numb hands and stabs the first number in his _recent contacts_ list. A second later, a familiar voice says, “Yeah?” It’s Clint.

“Barton. I need you to go to the quinjet. I need you to look at the body in the cargo bay." Steve covers his face with one hand. "I need you to tell me what you see.”

“Steve?” Clint’s voice has risen in tone and volume. “You okay?”

“Just… the cargo bay. I think something’s happened. I need you to check.”

“To Pietro’s body? Better not have. Where are you guys anyway?” He can hear the sigh of the door opening and Clint says _Just looking in on the kid,_ and then, a moment later, Clint whispers, “What the everloving fuck.”

Steve's heart is up in his throat. “Who is it?”

“Not a who,” Clint answers and then, louder, “Tony? _TONY.”_

A moment, a muffled noise, and then Tony’s voice. “Okay, well. Jesus, that’s a bomb.”

Steve gets to his feet. “I’m on my way.”

 

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

The car Steve selected from Tony’s garage goes hard before it redlines, which is good, because Steve has somewhere to be.

  
“You don’t think Stark will be able to handle matters himself?” Wanda asks. She’s gripping the angular, leather-clad dashboard in front of her with both hands, braced against Steve’s driving, the speed, and the curves of the road.

  
“I’m not worried. He’s a smart guy.”

  
“That’s what he keeps telling everybody.”

  
“I sure hope he hasn’t been lying all this time.”

  
They share a grin that would sound like a car sliding sideways if it was audible.

Steve signals, because they’re back in town now and he should, then he cranks the wheel and they take a sharp left at the lights and go up the hill. He hits the gas at the apex of the next corner and the car roars like a bomber under him.

  
“Have I mentioned I get car sick?” Wanda gasps.

  
“I don’t think you’ll have time.”

  
He pulls the car around the tax museum parking lot and into the house’s drive. Wanda says, _oh thank God_ , in a thin voice and piles out of the car. Steve sprints, she follows. The quinjet is right where they left it. Everything is as he remembers it, no hint of tattered edges. He runs up the gangplank and toward the cargo hold.

  
Clint is there, and Tony. Tony is lying like a mechanic under a car, and the thing that was Pietro’s body, that they took so gently and so carefully from the wreckage of the city, is shiny and silver and looks to Steve kind of like a jet engine.

  
Clint holds up his hands in the universal gesture of “stay back” and Steve breaks hard. Wanda, a little behind, has more time to stop.

  
“She’s big,” Tony says from under the bomb. “Not too smart but good at what she does. Except I’ve defused her so all that potential is going unfulfilled. Sad, in a way.” He kicks against the floor and scoots his way out from under the bomb. He grabs a rag and wipes grease from his hands. Steve’s surprised to find him still in jeans and a T-shirt.

  
“Something on my face?” Tony asks.

  
“No suit?” Steve counters.

  
Tony laughs and then stops. “You’re serious. Okay. No. This close we’d be lucky if the suit turned into shrapnel instead of just vaporizing. Where’d we _get_ this thing anyway? Look at it. Honestly, I’m going to give it an F for aesthetics but it’s a solid A- of a bomb. Not creative but pretty solid.” He pauses, looking at it. He frowns. “I built it, didn’t I?”

  
And suddenly Steve remembers. The weapons trader in South Africa. The shipyard. Tony’s remark that he’d worked under worse conditions. Wanda guiding them through the space, showing them the compressed air tanks, the welding machines. Pietro at the soldering station, nothing but a blur of blue smoke.

  
“Shit,” Tony says.

  
“Why?” Steve says at almost the same moment.

  
“And where is Pietro?” Wanda asks.

  
Clint nods. “Yeah, all that, but first, Steve, how did you figure it out?”

  
Steve points at the bomb. “Shouldn’t we get rid of that first?”

  
Tony glances over at it and then throws the oily rag at it. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s generally bad practice to have a massive unexploded bomb in your back yard but in this case I think we should make an exception. And Barton’s right. Want to share with the class?”

  
“We should get everyone together,” Wanda says. Steve nods. Seems fitting. After all, that’s how it was done.

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you don’t want overt, current politics in your fic, this fic is not for you.

They assemble in the kitchen. Clint, Wanda, and Natasha perch on the stools at the breakfast bar, Tony paces behind the counter. Sam leans against the counter, surveying faces. Steve doesn’t really know what to do with himself so he stands by the fridge. He tries putting his hands in his pockets but there’s not enough give in these pants. He really needs to start trying things on at the store. Finally he crosses his arms over his chest.

Clint looks over and raises an eyebrow. “You bouncing?”

Natasha thwacks Clint on the arm.

“What?” he complains.

“We’re missing some people,” she says to the room.

“Banner.” Tony’s voice is suspiciously carefree considering the speed of his response.

“Thor,” Sam adds.

Clint glances at Wanda. “Pietro," he says. "And, uh, does anybody else remember Jarvis being, uh, a guy?”

Everyone nods. Tony looks up. “Jarvis, you there?”

A disembodied voice says, ”Yes, sir.”

”What about the...” Tony rolls his hand in the air. “Compostable parts?”

There’s a pause. “I couldn’t say, sir.”

Tony nods. ”So Jarvis is a maybe.” Tony turns, and begins pulling mugs out of the cupboard in an apparent attempt to find the perfect one.

“Steve," he says suddenly. "I thought you were going to share."

Steve glances at Wanda. “You should go first,” he says.

Wanda nods. She speaks clearly and calmly, tells them about the false memories, and how Professor X helped her sift the real from the false.

“So someone tinkered with your mind, huh? Not really very nice is it?” Tony asks. Wanda gives him a cold stare.

“Tony, it wasn't her fault. And she’s not the only one,” Steve says quietly. “We’re all on the hook for some pretty bad things. It looks like Sokovia was our fault. People are scared of us.”

“It’s worse than that,” Sam says quietly. Steve turns to him. “Remember how it’s an election year?” Of course. Steve’s not likely to forget something as important as a federal election. “Anybody looked at the date lately?”

Tony says, “Jarvis, New York Times.”

A holographic image of a front page appears suspended in midair above the counter. The headline reads:

_Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment._

For a moment, no one speaks. At last, Natasha sighs. “There have been three major terrorism incidents around the world. People are scared."

Sam nods. "And Trump’s been selling himself as a guy who'll be tough on everything that's scary. A real man of the people.”

“Are you shitting me?” Clint cries. “ _That_ megalomaniac is a man of the people? Like, do guys that rich even know that humans are made of meat?”

“Hey,” Tony says.

“Present company excluded but c’mon, Tony, look at Obadiah Stane and whatshisname Hammer. Most of your demographic are probably lizards in human skin.”

Tony makes a small noise. “You’re probably not wrong.“ He pauses. Everyone looks at everyone else. Steve holds his breath, Tony shakes his head. “Nah. No. It's. No.”

Sam exhales. “God I hope not because we are not equipped to deal with that, too." Sam gives Steve a look like, _How did my life get like this?_

“What else did the Professor have to say?” Natasha asks.

Steve spools back to where they left off. He tells them what they know; the false memories, Frenhoff, and what they’ve done in cities around the world.  
While he talks, Tony brews a pot of coffee. Clint fiddles with what looks like it’s the business end of an arrow. Wanda looks at her hands. Sam cocks his head as he listens, and stares at his feet. Natasha alone looks thoughtful.

“Frenhoff,” she says when Steve finishes. “I know that name. He worked with Department X.”

“Hydra?” Steve asks.

She shrugs. “Insofar as he had any loyalty at all,” she answers. “He must be over a hundred now.” She fixes him with a look.

“No,” Steve says. “Absolutely not. It’ll endanger her. She’s been sick. She's too frail.”

“I’ll go with you,” Natasha says, getting to her feet. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in the update, friends. My life exploded. Things are back on track again, and I’ll get caught up here soon.
> 
> Note II: thanks for the heads up about the chapter posting weirdness. That’s what I get for uploading using wifi on a moving bus...

Sharon is at her desk, looking down at the folder of turgid paperwork when her phone buzzes. She flips it over on the file and takes a look.

- _Something happened. I can’t really explain but it’s not how it looks._

She doesn’t recognize the number.

- _I could use a friend_

- _Ok with it if you decide to collect on what I owe_

And then...

\- _on the cheek, if you don’t mind_

She does not move or shout or groan or grab her phone. She just types,

\- _lips_

_\- I’m not in any position to bargain._

_\- 30 minutes, Cafe de la Lune_.

A beat and then,

\- _the one in Manhattan_ _?_

\- _y_

\- _Roger that_

She turns the phone back over, face down on the paperwork file, and logs into her work computer. She picks a few quick-answer type emails. A question from Casey, the new Japanese language specialist, about a meeting room. Kat’s reminder that insurance claims have to go through the section director before they come to her. A note from Max that they don’t have the budget they used to, could people stop hoarding all the pens?

_Hey, Casey, it’s over in the Franklin building. Just ask Security to let you through._

_Thanks, Kat. Here’s hoping no claims in the near future._

_I have two pens and will lend one to you if you need it._

She sends out the emails in under one minute. Then she pockets her phone and grabs a stack of papers from her desk, tucks them under her arm and goes to the break room. She spends four minutes at the coffee pot, complaining about paperwork, two minutes in the hall outside the director’s office asking Tom how his kids are, one minute sticking her head into Matt’s office to avow in a loud, clear voice that she’s going to barricade herself in her office until all the paperwork is done.

Then she pulls her office door shut, goes out the fire escape, and catches the train.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me, New Yorkers. I have never been, but I hear people talk about the place a lot.

Steve does not like the train. It was never a problem before the war but these days it’s another story.

He’s been trying to take the train to get to where he’s going. There’s no place to park a car in Manhattan; having one would be vanity, pure and simple. He has his motorbike when he needs an engine, and he’s ridden a bicycle at breakneck speed with the bike messengers hustling from Central Park to Franklin Square, but he’s too top heavy to be comfortable on a pedal bike. So the train makes sense. The _A_ can get him to Tony's place, to see Peggy, and back home again in no time, as long as it's running. For the most part, it's great. Cheap and practical. Even if it is a too-small cylinder of metal, a bullet hurtling through the city. Even if the screaming of the breaks reminds him of the sound of ice ripping metal apart. Even if Steve’s heart rate rises and his ears fill up with the boom of his pulse, like the sound of waves slamming against a damaged hull. 

This is good for him, this business of regularly taking the train.

He knows it's good for him because once, when he was meeting Sam at the VA, he overheard the end of a conversation about something called _exposure therapy_ , and it made sense. Like maybe a guy could stop being scared of something if it never actually hurt him. Seemed reasonable, anyhow. He didn't follow up on it, just decided to try it out. Sam has enough on his plate anyhow.

So he rides most days, even if he hasn’t got a real destination, just for the practice. The _exposure_. He tries not to think about how exposure will kill a soldier just the same as a bullet. He's definitely not thinking about that now, as the train shakes like its coming apart, and Nat's thigh is pressed against his and he's wondering if she can feel him shaking, or if she'll put it down to the motion of the train.

Their stop can't come soon enough. Steve is on his feet and out the door, shouldering his way through, before he even thinks to see if Nat's with him. His mom would be ashamed. But she is there, sidestepping a guy carrying two orange-haired dogs, and looking bored with everything. He feels a little wave of relief crest over him, and avoids thinking about making the return trip.

Since he rides the train most days, Steve’s a combination of disappointed and relieved when the doo-wop guys signing in the station don’t seem to recognize him. For three years he’s been stopping to listen and putting a few bucks down every time, and even though they’ve never met, Steve feels like they kind of know each other. So when the guy leading the song just sort of looks right through Steve, he knows Nat’s disguise of ball cap, hoodie, jeans, is working for them. The bad BO obtained from putting the clothes in the locker with their sweaty gear is probably helping them avoid people, too.

“Go ahead. I’ll follow you,” Nat says, gesturing him forward.

“I’ll take rear,” Steve says. He can see right over her head and would feel better about sneaking into the city,  _his_ city, if Nat would just let him keep an eye out.

“Stairs,” she says. When he gives her a puzzled look she deigns to grin. “Listen, if you put that ass in somebody’s face they’re going to recognize it. And your ass is exactly that height for these stairs.”

Normally Steve would argue the accusation of unwittingly assing passers-by, but he can feel his ears turning red and anyway Nat’s probably right, this is her skill-set. He goes up the stairs first, hunched into his hoodie, trying not to pull his ball cap down just a little bit lower one more time. For the first time in his life he longs for the little body he once had, the one that people looked over or through or around. When he gets to the top of the stairs he feels like everyone is studiously not looking at him, as if they all know who he is but nobody wants to say anything about it, as if he’s done something so unspeakably awful that even a New Yorker won’t broach it. He wonders, as he always does after the goddamned train, if he screwed up. Said something, shouted maybe. Acted crazy. Screamed like every part of him wanted to. God, he wanted to. But Nat would have said something. Unless she was saving it for a safe place. Right? 

He looks at her. 

She looks back and frowns.  “You going to make it?”

He nods.

“Claustrophobic?”

He’d laugh if he could. It’s so far from the truth it’s the opposite of it. Steve loves small places. The bathroom in his old place was tiny, warmed by five degrees when he showered, and had no window. The was no better, warmer, safer place in the whole apartment.

“Just... not a fan of the train.”

She nods, clearly puzzled. “Noted." She turns and nods down the street. "Come on, the cafe is over there.”

Steve swallows his anxiety. Sharon is there, alone. He can see her sipping a coffee on the little patio. Nat leads him by the hand in that direction. He's aware that her hand is very small, should be fragile, somehow isn't. He's aware that his body is huge and impossible to hide. Sharon is going to spot them a mile off.

 

*

 

It's not quite as bad as that, though Sharon clocks them before they make it to her. She looks from Steve to Nat and back again. "Hey, lady, you got a pen?" Nat asks. Sharon nods and leans forward to get her bag. "I stole it from work," she says.

Steve hunches against the patio rail in what he hopes is a nonchalant slouch that will make him invisible. Nat takes the pen from Sharon and gives it a shake. 

"You guys have been in the paper lately," Sharon murmurs, watching Nat shake the pen till the ink loosens up. 

"It's a long story," Steve says. "I think Peg might know something about what happened."

Sharon looks at Nat, who is making a show of trying to find a piece of paper. She passes Natasha a napkin. 

"You going to see her?" Sharon asks.

Steve nods. 

"Look, I appreciate you telling me, but why? You need someone to sneak you in?" Sharon casts a wry look at Natasha. 

"It involves Department X." He doesn't have to add that this is dangerous to Peggy, that it'll be upsetting for her, that she shouldn't have to think about the war in her old age. And if she does, she sure as hell shouldn't have to be alone with her thoughts after.

Sharon's chin goes up just a fraction of an inch and for a moment, Steve's afraid she's going to tell them to stay away from Peggy, to leave her alone. It's what they should do. God knows Peggy's done her duty to her motherland and her adopted homeland, too.

"I'll be there," Sharon says instead.

Nat hands back the pen, and the napkin too and Steve catches a glimpse of _4pm_ written there. Sharon folds it and puts it in her pocket. She nods. 

Nat takes Steve's hand and they head north, toward Mount Saint Mary. 

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If anything in this chapter cuts like glass, that’d be @maxiekat’s fault. Thanks for being wonderfully awful, pal!

Peggy seems almost to be waiting for them. She is sitting up her bed, the pale blue nursing home linens pooled around her hips, wearing a snowy white blouse. The corner of a tweed skirt peeks out from under the covers. On her lap, a tray with buttered toast and a cup and saucer of tea. Steve’s last bouquet of flowers is slowly dying on the night stand. He wishes he’d thought to stop and get something else, even some of those faded and exhausted carnations sometimes available from the bodega down the street.

“Hi Peg,” he murmurs when he lets himself in. Sharon’s there with them, Nat takes up a position at the door, something between look-out and bodyguard.

“Is this an interrogation?” Peggy’s tone is humour edged with knives.

He grins helplessly. Sharon goes to the bedside and kisses her aunt’s cheek. Peggy looks startled, stares at her, then casts a look at Steve. “French?” she asks in an undertone.

Steve gets an unpleasant feeling in his belly, a heavy sensation like the one that accompanied his revelation at Xavier’s School.

“Yeah,” he lies quietly, he shifts a little closer to the bedside. “Peggy, I, uh, I need some help. Did you hear about what happened?”

“It’s classified,” she answers briskly.

There’s silence in the room.

Peggy looks right at Steve. Looks him up and down. “You’re a good double, but you lack his warmth.”

Steve’s stomach cranks hard into a knot. He reaches for something to say and can’t find a damn thing.

“It’ll do from a distance,” Peggy adds. She sets down her cup and pushes at the tray. Sharon moves it off her lap without being asked. “ _Merci_ ,” Peggy says. She looks at Steve again, and nods. “Your expression is spot on,” she adds with a wry little laugh. “He was always worried about something.”

Steve ducks his head so she won’t read his face like he knows she can. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Natasha move.

“He’s not good enough to fool you, though,” she says. “What gives it away?”

Peggy raises her chin. “I heard Steve Rogers die,” Peggy answers, very matter-of-fact. “We were in radio contact when he ditched the Valkyrie. He lost incoming, but I didn’t. I was with him until the aircraft sank.” Her voice turns soft. “Do you know what drowning sounds like? I do. It’s very quiet.” She shakes her head just a little. “You’d have to employ extreme measures to get me to believe this is him.”

“Extreme like Frenhoff?” Natasha asks.

Peggy jerks forward in the bed, thin chest suddenly heaving, one brittle finger extended like an accusation at Natasha.  
“Who authorized that? Is he here? I _want access_.”

Natasha shakes her head. “We’re hunting for him. We need to know what you know. It’s urgent.”

Peggy eases back against the pillows.  
“God almighty,” she whispers. Then, sharply, “Have the Russians got Gouzenko?”

“No.” Nat says without missing a beat. “Not yet.”

Steve stares at Natasha. She ignores him. Peggy does too. They’re focused on one another, as if there’s nothing else in the room, two stars dragged into each other’s orbit, circling one another.

“And What about Barnes?” Peggy asks quietly.

“What about him?” Sharon returns. Peggy glances at Sharon, as if startled.

“She’s got clearance,” Natasha says briskly. “You can speak.”

Peggy looks at Steve at last. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “He lived.”

Steve can’t breathe. He can’t see anything but Peggy’s eyes. Peggy goes on, unprompted.

“God, we tried.” Her voice breaks. “You must understand it’s not his fault. I’ve seen Frenhoff’s work before. He got Dooley, too. I think we almost reached him, Dum Dum and I.” She’s crying now and all Steve can do it put his hand over hers and will himself to keep silent, not ask all the questions that are trying to come out. Peggy pulls in a breath that steadies her. “Frenhoff was there,” she adds. “That bloody bastard. Handling Barnes. I’m sure of it.”

“For the Russians?” Sharon asks.

“For Hydra,” Peggy spits. “Who else?” She looks over at Steve. “I couldn’t tell you. I just couldn’t. He tried, Steve. He wasn’t in control, he didn’t know how to make it stop. It would have broken your heart. I couldn’t tell you.”

“Where?” Natasha asks quietly.

“In Ottawa,” Peggy answers. “In December.” There’s a moment, a pause, as if she heard something, then, “It’s really quite a lovely town. Skating on the river. You’ll enjoy yourself.”

She touches her tear-streaked cheeks. “Oh. Excuse me. Springtime is dreadful. I love the magnolias but they don’t love me. And getting old isn’t helping.” She takes a tissue from the box at her bedside. “Sharon, can you find a chair for our new guest?” She smiles at Steve. “You rotter, you’ve been spending half your pension on cut flowers for me. Save it for the funeral.” She chuckles at her own joke and Steve tries to make a corresponding noise. It comes out a little strangled.

“I’m sorry,” Peggy says, reaching out to shake Nat’s hand. “Tell me your name again? My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

“It’s Natasha,” Nat answers, “but since Sharon’s here, maybe we’ll step out so you two can have some time together.”

“Enjoy Ottawa,” Peggy says, and squeezes Steve’s hand.

 

***

 

They slip out the service entrance and into the street, and Steve feels as if he is being squeezed and pulled and pushed all at once.

“Deep breaths,” Nat says quietly. “Can you keep it together on the train?”

He nods. But he looks back up at the brick edifice of Mount Saint Mary, hunting for the right window, to see if she is looking. She’s not. And neither is Sharon, for that matter.

“Was any of that useful?” he asks.

“All of it,” Nat tells him. “We got everything we need.”

Steve looks at her. “Really?”

She starts walking and he follows her. “Frenhoff worked with Hydra on the Gouzenko defection, and on Barnes.” She glances at him when she says Bucky’s name, a sort of non-verbal apology. “If he was involved in the Winter Soldier project, those files are, helpfully, available online. That’s plenty for me to work with. I’ll find him.”

Steve nods. Everything that was tangled up and twisted in him is turning cold and hard. “Good,” he says with a nod. “Good. I wanna talk to that guy.”

Nat raises and eyebrow and tips her head. “I bet you do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For historical context, Igor Gouzenko was a Russian cipher clerk who defected with a briefcase full of incredibly important documents one night in 1945. And, since Canadians are bad at espionage, poor Igor wandered the streets of Ottawa with his briefcase trying to get an official to take him seriously while the Russians ran around trying to snatch him off the street.


	19. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crap! I meant to put this in earlier. Sorry.

First, there was the unexpected bottleneck of traffic on the bridge, and then the call from his editor — that op ed piece, it caught the attention of a researcher at the Smithsonian. Could he call the guy back? Could he do an interview piece for the Sunday edition?

Dustan had been cranking the wheel of his car hard in order to shimmy into the last available parking spot, late for pick up again, before he’d managed to end the phone call, and when he opened his car door he heard the high-pitched keening cry of his not-yet-two-year-old son, breaking his heart over some toddler injustice. By the time he had collected Tomaz, settled him in the car seat with a snack, navigated the snarl of traffic at the bridge, and was starting to think about when he might have a chance to call this Smithsonian guy back, he had missed the grocery store. But Tomaz was already getting restless, so there would be no doubling back.

  
He parked, got Tomaz, along with attendant lunch kit and stuffed bear, out of the car, grabbed his file of print outs of WWII-era American enlistment papers, his phone and laptop, and shouldered his way through the first door and then the second, bypassed the elevator as unlikely to be working, and took the two flights up to the suite he and Tomaz and Katerina shared. Tomaz cried about wanting his keys, and then his phone, and was finally pacified by a second snack. Perhaps that was why Dustan didn’t notice. Or perhaps it was because he was not supposed to notice.

He has noticed now.

Tomaz is in his little bedroom, telling his toys all about his day, and Katerina is probably stuck in traffic on the bridge. And if Dustan Petrescu is very lucky, she will be late home, and Tomaz will be overlooked. Because there is a man in this apartment, and Dustan has studied this long enough to know what his unexpected arrival forebodes.

But Dustan has been a writer all of his life, and a reporter for most of it. He can't stop himself from taking stock. The man is middle height and thickly built. There’s a whiff of unwashed clothes and sweat about him, his chin is stubbled unevenly, as if he shaves in a bathroom with a small mirror, or poor light. His hair is too long for his face, and five days away from clean. He is wearing a t-shirt of cheap, black material. The shirtsleeves end at the biceps and one arm is pale skinned and the other is made of metal.

Dustan Petrescu sets down his laptop, coat, phone, the file, his son’s lunch kit and bear, all in a heap on the floor. It is everything he has ever dreamed of, and everything he ever feared.

“My son,” Dustan says in a near-breathless whisper. “He’s only two. He won’t be able to tell anyone what happened. He hasn’t even seen you. Give me your word.”

The Winter Soldier shakes his head a fraction. “It’s not like that,” he says in a tone that is startling in its softness. "I don't do that kind of work any more." 

Dunstan must be cautious. He must not whoop or scream or burst into tears. But he cannot stop himself from whispering, “I was right. You are in Bucharest now."

“You were right,” the Winter Soldier agrees. He half turns, reaching for a satchel that lies propped against the foot of a kitchen chair, and unzips the bag. There are books inside. Dustan can see the spine of _Eternal Winter._ “You were right about a lot of things. Not all of it.”  
Dustan’s knees are weak.

“You want to set the record straight.”

The Winter Soldier nods.

Dustan nods too. “Yes. Of course. But,” he can’t help himself. His mother always did say she feared he’d die of curiosity and this is probably going to be the thing that does it.

“What?” the Winter Soldier asks.

Dustan swallows down the last gulp of good sense. “What do I call you?

A beat of silence. A little breath of a laugh. “I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

Dustan lets fly. “What about Bucky?”

The Winter Soldier cracks a very small grin. “That’ll do.”

And if this is going to be the end, Dustan will die with a smile on his face. He never had the evidence, just a theory, a feeling in his gut.

“Of course,” he whispers. And he realizes that knowing the name crystallizes so much of what has been floating free in his head. He looks again at the intruder and tries to superimpose the face in the enlistment photograph with what stands before him; the boy who went to war, and the man that never returned. 

“And you?” Dustan asks. “What do you want?”

Bucky selects a book from the satchel, a notebook. He opens it, and shows Dustan a page of scrawl, the numbers 1944, 1945, 1946 written in blue ballpoint, with blanks beside them. Dustan’s heart wants to pound out through the front of his chest.

“You dont remember,” Dustan says. “Not everything.”

“Not everything,” he agrees. “I want to know how it was done.”

Dustan nods. “I have a theory.” 


	20. Chapter 20

“Looks like Fennhoff was a hypnotist,” Nat says, already digging through the internet before they even hit the station. “Active just post-war. Brought over in the late forties, when he worked as a consultant.”

Not for the first time this century, Steve is flabbergasted. “You found that already?”

She shrugs, walking fast.  “The guy has a Wikipedia page.”

Steve frowns. As if she sensed it, she grins without even looking up from her phone.  “Somebody else skimmed the data dump from last year and built it,” she says in response to his unasked question.

“I guess it’s good to have a hobby,” Steve murmurs. 

They get to the station in a heartbeat, and take the stairs down two at a time. Now that he’s focused, the tiny, underground tank holds no terror for him.  “Is Fennhoff still active?”

Nat consults her phone. “Apprehended by SHIELD as a Red agent in 1949."

Steve grunts.  _Great._ "So he went into bad-guy boot-camp, is what you're saying." 

"Peggy Carter was involved in his apprehension." 

Steve groans.

"Looks like he was involved in the bombing of a SHEILD office. And, o h,” Nat says softly. “Well that’s interesting.”

They push through the turnstiles. Steve is so keyed up he could jump over them, but talk about attracting attention.

“Looks like there’s been a series of mass hypnosis events in New York in the last year. There’s a possible link.”

“What?” Steve asks, turning to look at the glowing slab of glass that people call a phone but in no way resembles an actual phone. Natasha turns it so he can see, and then tells him anyway.

“The blonde there, she’s TV and radio personality. Looks like she was a victim.” She frowns up at Steve, thoughtful. 

"What?"

“That doesn’t really fit Fennhoff’s resume. He's old. In Europe. Aparently doing things to enhanced people. Not causing mayhem in Hell's Kitchen.”

Steve slides his hands into the kangaroo pocket of the hoodie and looks at the cracked concrete between his shoes. “You think there’s two of them?”

She shrugs. “What do we know? We know he was in Strucker’s lab. We know he had us build a bomb. We know he let us come back to New York.”

She frowns a few moments and then says, “You’re the tactician here.”

Steve rolls his shoulders to loosen the tight muscles. “The only reason we didn’t land in the city was because of Wanda. We didn't want her to have to deal with the media around the tower. If we _had_ gone right to the tower, we would have been swarmed by the media. And, given what we've been doing, probably the police and the army, too.”

He closes his eyes. The warm sigh of air that presages a train gusts over his face.

“Seems reasonable,” she agrees.

“I think we were supposed to blow the tower,” Steve murmurs. “Take out a chunk of the press, and the police.”

“I think it would be worse than that,” Natasha says. “The tower runs on arc reactor technology now. It would be like dropping a nuke on Manhattan.” She turns off her phone, pockets it, and looks up at him. “This won't mean anything to you, but all this reminds me of Glasnost, when communism was ending and everything was coming apart." 

“How?”

“I haven’t been used like this since then,” she answers with a little laugh. “And I can feel something else going on in the shadows, but I can’t see it yet.” She glances down the station where the train is hollering toward them, then back to Steve.  “I think there’s a leadership struggle going on in Hydra. They were exposed. They lost the Winter Soldier. They lost SHIELD. They lost _Pierce_. I think there’s a leadership vacuum."

"And Fennhoff wants to be in charge."

Natasha nods. “And the other contender is in New York. W e were supposed to destroy him.”

“And a hell of a lot of the city.”

“Take it from me,” she says in a way that makes him think he really does need to read that book she gave him on the rise of modern Russia. “If Department X could have made a Winter Soldier out of someone who could move like Pietro Maximoff, they would have. Leadership struggles are bad, but this one is going to be a bloodbath.”

“No,” Steve says quietly. The train sighs to a stop in front of them. “No, it isn’t.”

"You have a plan?"

"I made a promise. I said we'd rescue the kid. We're going to."

She looks like she wants to laugh, but she doesn't. "All right," she says after a beat. "I'm in."

 


	21. Interlude

Bucky has done some strange things in his time, but nothing as strange as this. At least, that's how it feels.

He has haunted and hunted. He has been a tool and a thing. He has been a story to frighten children and old men. But he has not been the fourth at a weeknight family dinner, seated opposite a toddler who tucks into his dinner with delight, beside a woman who eyes him like a cat she's thinking of adopting, and a man who stares with something like delight until his wife thumps him, teasingly on the arm.

"If you don't blink your eyeballs will dry out," she tells him. 

Dustan ducks his head like a schoolboy, rather than the forty-something he probably is. 

"Excuse me. My manners. It's just that I have so many questions." He nods at Bucky's hand, the left one. "It moves so seamlessly. Does it feel, too?"

Bucky nods, looking down at it. He is anxious of the sight of his hand here in this place - a weapon at the dinner table. "Hot, cold," he answers. "Tactile sensation, just like the other side." It wasn't always as good as it is today, but even the early versions were good. They gave him everything he needed for finesse; they required it of him. But the weight of it is huge, and it drags him down sometimes. He prefers to rest his left side when he can. On his knee, when he leans forward, on the counter when he cooks. "It goes all the way to the spine," he says. "It's heavy."

"I see," Dustan breathes.

" _The_ spine?" Katerina asks. 

He glances at her. She tips her head in his direction and doesn't press it. Instead, Katerina tsks at Tomaz and wipes his smeared face with her thumb, as if that was the only thing on her mind. "Does anyone want seconds?" she asks. Tomaz says yes, then holds up both arms and says  _yay!_  Katerina ladles more out for Bucky, too.  

Dinner is bowls of deep red borsch, topped with sour cream, covered over with fresh dill and served with lemon slices. The food is like nothing Bucky remembers. There a things in his notebooks, foods, listed as “good” but this is something altogether different. It is not the food at all.

Dustan swallows a gulp of food like a seagull in a hurry. "But, if it attaches to the spine, how--"

"Dustan," Katerina chides. "He can hardly eat with you interrogating him. Save that for after dinner." 

"Right," Dustan agrees. "Right." He grins at Bucky. "Sorry. I keep thinking you're about to vanish in a puff of smoke. I don't see how any of this can be real. Just, did you--? "

" _Dustan_." Katerina sounds scandalized. 

Bucky chuckles. 

"No," she says, "don't indulge him, it'll only get worse." 

“She's right," Dustan says, looking fondly at Katerina. He nods back at Bucky. "It just that context is everything. Now I know who you are, an American, a prisoner of war, I understand so much more.” 

“Context,” Bucky says quietly. That's a nice word to package up all the things he's been thinking about while they ate dinner as if he was an old friend who had dropped in unexpectedly, and it's making it a little hard for him to talk. 

Bucky has eaten since he became the Soldier. It wasn’t all NG tube and nutritional slurry, though god knows there was enough of that. There were meals. There were even meals among those who might have been considered comrades, if not peers. And he has tasted borsch before - in the Ukraine, decades ago. But not as a guest in a home. Not with children present. There has not been a sit-down-in-the-kitchen-family-meal, not since Brooklyn, not since before the war. And the memories of those that were, they are grainy as an old photograph. Just ghosts now, really. Hardly there at all. A meal with his mother and father and his sisters, and Steve, sombre but using his best manners. After his mother passed, maybe. Another time, at a fancy do, maybe a cousin's wedding. Another time, him and Steve and Bucky's dad, and the singed smell of burnt dinner, and a stomach sore from laughing about it. But those memories float free, like balloons with a string that have been cut. He’s not sure how he felt then, at those tables, with those people. The reason for being there is gone, the substance of the conversation, the pleasures and pains of life up to and around that moment. Those memories, they are rubbed thin, worn down. He tapped them. He called them up, when he was on the table, under the bone saw, kettled under jets of icy water, in the spaces between electric shocks. When he tried not to hear the voice whispering softly, _focus, focus_. He reached for memories like those.  He wore them down to nubs. There is no joy to be eked out of them any more. They're faded as a photograph, crumbling like newsprint.

Context is everything.

“See, as an American, it's no wonder the Russians decided to send you with Department X. They could have sold you back to the US, but they already knew the Cold War was coming.” Dustan pauses a moment to observe his son, who is now wearing a moustache of soup, and ruffles his hair affectionately. Then he returns to Bucky. “When did you learn who you were? It must have been a great shock.”

Katerina sighs. She turns to Bucky. “He has been studying you his whole life. You’ll have to forgive him.”

Bucky is not sure what to say, but the soup is good and taking another mouthful is easy.

“After dinner,” Katerina says, nodding at Tomaz. “We’ll go out to get Christmas gifts.” She looks at Bucky again. “I will rescue you in two hours.”

Dustan snorts. “He won’t need rescuing!”

Katerina gives Bucky a little look that says she absolutely will. Bucky smiles. 


	22. Chapter 22

And so Steve finds himself going back, flying over an ocean all battleship grey, back toward a cold castle with a room full of stars. Tony stays with the bomb, making phone calls and wheeling-dealing with political and business and media contacts like a man with three paper cups and a nut. Sam, a New Yorker of this time, is scouring Hell’s Kitchen for the second hypnotist, and Clint knows a PI who might be able to help. Steve is going back not quite alone; Natasha has volunteered to go back, and to his surprise, Wanda is coming too. He’s glad of their company. There’s something about flying over the vast expanse of the Atlantic that makes his insides twist. Something about flying under the clouds and above the water, so the world is all sombre grey. It is as if he is caught between the hammer and anvil of some colossal being, on whose radar he does not even register a blip. It would only take one fault to go plunging into the water. One fault to feel the salt on his eyelashes, one fault to taste the brackish water, to breathe it in again. One fault to look up and up endlessly, searching for the stars.

“Steve.”

Natasha’s voice jerks him back to the present. He looks over at her, she is looking back, clear-eyed and serious, serious as he hasn’t seen her since they landed up in Sam’s place, ruining all those nice, soft towels with soot and blood. He touches the memory with a sense of disbelief. Like a nightmare fantasy; all your friends turning against you, all the good you thought you were doing gone bad.

“Hey,” she says. “Don’t get lost in there.”

He blinks. Maybe he missed something that would explain that sentence. He looks behind him, to where Wanda is seated, hoping for a clue. Wanda looks pensive.

“She’s right,” Wanda says. “We discovered the hypnosis, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still operating in a way.” She taps her temple for emphasis.

“I’m okay,” he says, wondering, as he opens his mouth, if it’s just that they’re over the ocean and that’s why the air seems to taste of salt and dead things.

“Just like you were okay on the train?” Natasha asks.

He laughs softly. “Pretty much.”

Nat grins that long-suffering, lopsided grin and goes to stand up. “Unsolicited advice: Don’t start second guessing reality.”

He blinks, looking after her as she threads her way between seats, down to the bunks.

Wanda is looking too, and then she nods at Steve. “It’s good advice. You can’t ever know what’s really real. What’s the saying? Reality is what keeps going even if you stop believing in it.”

That makes him pause.

He thinks of SHEILD, which blew away like fog. He thinks of Rumlow and the rest of the STRIKE team, suddenly vanished. He thinks of the apparition of Bucky, the wounds he gave Steve, the sand that was in his hair for a week afterward. All of it gone. He thinks of the Smithsonian, the curator’s solemn voice on the phone: “Someone has stolen a number of objects in the collection...”

He thinks of the things that remain: The pain of the machine that transformed him and his limbs changing and growing, Peggy’s firecracker wit, Bucky’s eyes as he fell. The cold. The taste in his mouth; seawater. The way he longs to see the stars and never can.

He thinks of this: A scenario where a dead man isn’t dead, and there's a woman with smarts like a knife who sticks with him in spite of his inadequacies. A war going on, one full of miracles and horrors.

Only _this_ time he’s going to rescue the dead man who is not dead, and there’s no false romance between the leading lady and himself. Like before, but better, because he's flying over the Atlantic to go rescue someone, not to ditch a plane in the drink and wind up entombed. It's sick, really. But he can't help himself. So was the fantasy of Bucky's hands on his hips, and his warm mouth, and his voice saying, _So sweet for me, Stevie_ , and how Steve imagined he turning over on hands and knees for him. So was how he populated the fantasy apartment with the sound of a shower running, a soft tenor singing in the kitchen, the smell of coffee. 

He has been lost in his own head before, but not like this.  

He lived there, in between dying and being reborn again and again. Because the reality was ghastly. The reality was ice and pain and screaming. The screaming in the _Valkyrie_.

There were times he really believed he was there, in the kitchen, and he could hear Bucky singing _Willow Weep for Me_. When the screaming diminished and the ice receded and there was only steam and soft, warm light, and the promise of a shared bed. But this fantasy? This cockeyed fantasy of being a hero a hundred years after everything started, and what it would mean if that were true? How it would be to come out of the ice in a future made up of every Science Fiction magazine he ever read, populated with avatars of the people he knew - Tony for Howard, Sharon for Peggy, Peggy a ghost of herself -- and Bucky, too. It's all too much, too implausible. It just can't be.

He looks over at Wanda and feels a fondness for her that he’s never felt before. He’s lucky to have her here, this avatar of his better self. The person who figures out that someone they love is not dead, who demands they return and rescue him. The person he should have been.

“I'm glad you're here,” he says. 

She frowns just a little and he doesn't want to tell her he knows, in case he spoils it, and finds himself back in the water, in the _Valkyrie_ , screaming. So he turns back to the cockpit controls.

He should have known, though. He really should have known.

All that time awake in New York and not a single star in the sky.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanda is referencing this quote by PK Dick: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” Incidentally, Dick also said: “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane." 
> 
> You pays your money and you takes your chances.


	23. Interlude

Bucky stays until Katerina extracts him, and leaves with a promise to come back tomorrow for dinner and more of Dustan’s gentle interrogation.

He returns to Obor as the market, hung with glowing lights and festooned with greenery, is closing for the night, and sees no one he knows. Up the many stairs to his squat and then in through the door with the busted lock and into the room where his breath hangs before him just as it did outside. He is glad of the mattress that Josh and Elena found him, and the sleeping bag he salvaged. The cold is bad for sleep; he resists it out of habit. And when he does sleep in the cold, the sleep is unquiet at best.

  
In the morning, still crisp and dark, with stars like pinpricks over the drowsy market, Bucky emerges uncomfortable in his own skin, nightmares like frost on him. He gets a coffee from Anca’s stall so that he can practice human interaction with someone who doesn’t expect too much of her groggy customers. When it seems he’s good enough to pass for normal, he makes his way to Costan’s stall for apples to fry and sprinkle with sugar and have on a slice of bread. Something easy for a stomach that feels a little queasy.

On his way back to his squat, he passes Milo’s newspaper stand and it’s like being struck by lightning.

  
Steve is there, there, front and centre of the _Independent_ and the headline reads

_WHO PUT THEM IN CHARGE?_

_Sokovia demolished, one million displaced, thousands dead._ _Humanitarian crisis in progress - Wakanda donates aid, UN calls for more help from Europe_  
  
The whirlwind that hits him is everything all at once - shock, and sick, falling horror, and an automatic response to Steve’s face, the expression of heartbreak and exhaustion etched in soot and sweat there. And over all, the urge to touch that face, feel the shape of it under his fingers, find the places the bones came apart under his fist, as if he can make amends for something as unforgivable as that.

  
Milo catches him looking at the newspapers.

  
“Here it comes,” he says, nodding at the paper. “These Avengers, X-Men, all those groups. And now this Winter Soldier business. Out of the shadows and into the light.” He gives Bucky a significant look.

  
“Winter Soldier?” Bucky asks, and it comes out a bit strangled.

  
Milo taps the nearest newspaper with his big blunt forefinger. Bucky looks. He hadn’t even noticed the second headline, he was too completely arrested by the sight of Steve’s face and the headline above it. But there, in the top corner, is a sketch-portrait of Dustan Petrescu, and a lede in small print:

_The American Boy: how the Winter Soldier came to be and what it means for Bucharest_

Bucky exhales until he thinks there’s nothing left in his chest. Dustan must have been up all night, writing and rewriting.

  
“He’s smart,” Milo says, watching Bucky from under the brim of his cap. “A reporter of the old school. Real investigations.”

  
Bucky fishes some money out of his pocket. “Too smart,” he whispers. He’s thinking of the book, the questions Dustan asked, and now this piece. Dustan is a man born for the job he’s in, with a good life, but this is one hell of a dangerous obsession.

  
“He was coming in on the City desk as I was going out,” Milo goes on. “I taught him what I knew, but he didn’t really need me. Really good.”

“Maybe too good.” Bucky will have to warn Dustan, to tell him to let the information trickle out, lest he draw too much attention. Bucky’s not stupid enough to think Hydra’s had it, but maybe Dustan is. Why shouldn’t he be?

  
And then there’s the little matter of Steve fucking Rogers destroying a goddamned city.

And What about the kid? Steve promised to rescue him. He said he had. But did he?

  
Bucky puts some money down. “I’ll have one of each paper,” he says. “And a map. Of the city and one of the guidebooks, too.” He points at the display by the till. Hunter’s guides to Romania.

  
Milo ducks his head so he can look Bucky dead in the eyes. “Dustan is a friend of mine, you hear me?”

  
Bucky blinks at him. “What?”

  
Milo points at him. “I am an old man but I am a hell of a writer. I’ll bury you, like I buried Ceausescu.”

  
Bucky smiles. You have to hand it to the residents of Obor. You really do.

  
“I’m... just a fan, that’s all.”

  
Milo narrows his eyes to a squint for just an instant at Bucky and suddenly Bucky thinks he might need to find a new place to get his papers.

  
Finally, Milo nods and makes change. Bucky leaves with a half dozen papers under his arm, and a hundred things to do today.

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was not a restful holiday season, hoo boy no. Hopefully updates will be more reasonable again here.

Steve lands the quinjet in the same place as before, and the three of them walk shoulder to shoulder, between the narrow trunks of pine and larch, hearing nothing but the squeak and crunch of snow underfoot.

“We check in every ten minutes,” Natasha says as they crest the small rise where, last time, the Hulk was making his colossal presence known. “You don’t check in, we both go to the last known location and stick together. Got it?”

Steve nods. Wanda glances from face to face.

“State your location and your name,” Steve explains. “First floor southwest bedroom, for example.”

Wanda smiles a little uneasily. “I am not so good with directions.”

Natasha blinks, and Steve’s about to point to the castle and the mountains rising behind it and say, _The mountains are to the north_ , but his earpiece crackles to life.

_I got ahold of our friends up the road and let them know what’s up._

It’s Tony. Steve touches his ear, for no reason at all, really. It’s just habit. Wireless technology has been around for a long time, but, excepting the radio, Steve’s only been using it for a year or so. Assuming, of course, any of this is real.

“You mean Xavier’s people?” he asks.

_He doesn’t like the three of you going back by yourselves. I pointed out how useful numbers were last time. He’s sending babysitters anyhow._

“Babysitters?” Wanda asks.

Something roars above, and suddenly the air is a blizzard - snow flying up from the ground, down from the trees, the trees themselves shaking as if hit by a sudden storm. A large, black aircraft punches through the swirling snow, and settles not far away. It’s small and sleek, a lot like the quinjet, and when the gangplank drops, Steve recognizes Logan, suited up in tactical gear, and the white-haired woman from the hallway of the mansion. Just them, nobody else.

“Well, they’re here,” Steve says, and tries not to sound quite as grudging as he feels.

 _The woman's Aurora, goes by Storm, and the guy's Logan, goes by Wolverine,_ Tony tells him. _Play nice._

“Place your bets,” Natasha murmurs as the other two come striding across fifty feet of frozen earth and snow.

“Bets?” Steve asks.

 _Odds?_ Tony asks.

“Two to one, to Wolverine,” Nat answers. She flashes a grin at Steve. “No offence, Steve.”

_I’ll take those odds. Put me in for a hundred._

Steve feels weirdly warmed by that. “Thanks, Tony.”

_Don’t let me down._

“It won’t come to that,” Steve answers. He smiles at Logan and offers a hand. Logan grips it, and there’s something in the grip that isn’t right, that’s too firm, like a boxer who’s soaked his gloves in plaster before getting into the ring. He glances at Nat who shrugs minutely. Aparently everybody knows about this but him.

There’s the click as Tony disconnects. A moment later, Storm has raised her hands and lowered them in a _calm down_ gesture that has taken all the snow out of the sky. The air is still again, and the castle stands like the backdrop of some vaudevillian play. Of course it does, Steve thinks ruefully. But it’s better than drowning again and again.


	25. Chapter 25

“Logan,” Steve says, close enough now to see Logan is wearing a pair of foamy earplugs around his neck like a construction worker. He offers his hand to shake even as he says, “Don’t take this the wrong way but this isn’t—“

“Save it,” Logan says. He jerks one stubby thumb at himself. “Devil’s Brigade.” Then he jerks his thumb at the Aurora, well, Storm. “Cape Town. When things were bad.”

Steve doesn’t know shit about the battle of Cape Town, assuming that’s what Logan means, but he sure as hell knows about Normandy. A part of him runs warm with admiration and a part of him recoils at the thought of the horror. He meets Logan’s eyes and Logan gives him a look that says, _don’t_. Which counts as an excellent resume, as far as Steve's concerned. And even though it's something that Steve's going to ask about later, given Logan's apparent under-fifty-ness, now really isn't the time. 

“Works for me,” he says instead, and shakes Storm’s hand too. “Honestly, it's good to have a little extra help.”

“How about a little practicality?” Storm reaches into the little pack and pulls out a handful of earplugs, these ones are bright pink and foamy, the kind dangling around the necks of construction workers the world over. A little more garish than the ones around Logan's neck, but same style. “He’s a hypnotist, isn’t he?” she asks, offering the earplugs like candy.

Wanda takes a pair, Steve too. Natasha shakes her head. Storm’s gaze lingers on her for just a heartbeat longer than normal, then she picks a pair herself and puts the rest away.

“Thanks. Are you familiar with the layout of the castle?” Steve asks.

“I brought Storm up to speed,” Logan answers, and the words come with another look that's a definite _don’t_. Okay then. Steve looks up to the castle. In one window, it’s either the reflection of the fading sun, or a light on, dimly, behind frost-occluded panes. Something ugly leaps up in him and bays to be let free. He tamps it down hard.

“One hypnotist. Elderly but dangerous. At least one young male, Enhanced.”

“Super speed,” Wanda supplies in answer to Storm’s raised eyebrows.

“Possibly...” Steve’s spent a fair bit of time in command, but never quite like this. “Well, a giant green rage monster or a middle aged male. And a god of thunder.”

Storm makes a small noise, as if Steve just told her he bakes his own bread. She nods at them. "Interesting."

“I’ll take the bedrooms on the west side,” Steve says. “Wanda, the foyer and service areas. Logan, the lab. Nat—“

He turns to look at her and keeps turning, like a dummy. She’s gone.

“Wildcard in play,” Logan says. “We've got the bulk of the place covered. Let’s get going.”

 Steve nods.

 

***

Natasha likes Storm immediately. She likes her practicality and the calm that radiates from her. Not like Bruce’s tightly controlled and somewhat forceful demeanour, rather, the serenity of a top general, an astronaut, a Matron of the Red Room. Someone for whom passions are an asset to be deployed at will, and not a liability. She's about to say something to her when she sees the shadow off to the side, deep in the trees. She knows that shape at the edge of her vision; a ghost that kills. When Steve begins parcelling out the castle, she slips away.

The shadow greets her with a nod. 

Bucky has put on some weight since the last time she saw him. All that shakshuka and sorici is starting to reshape him, adding mass to that lean frame. He’s wearing a black hoodie and a black coat that might be made of leather, a pair of black jeans that fit at the waist and strain at the thighs. Long hair pulled back. He's wearing a pair of fingerless black gloves, and holding a hunting rifle in one hand.

"Not a wraith anymore," she murmurs. 

His mouth quirks in an awkward smile. It’s just an instant and then it’s gone again. He looks at Steve, fifty feet away, noticing Natasha's absence. Steve's eyes scan the wood and pass over them both, hidden as they are among the trees.

"Now might not be the best time for a reunion," she murmurs. 

Bucky looks back at her. "I read about Sokovia. And Johannesburg."

She scowls.

"Yeah," he answers. "Well, we've all done things we regret." His voice is cold and flat. He shifts his grip on the rifle, and the metal of his fingers gleams in the fading light. "A guy who knows more about me than I do thinks a hypnotist was involved in the early Winter Soldier program. Guess where he figures a lot of the work took place."

She glances at the castle, and can imagine it crawling like a termite mound, alive with lights and science and magic and pain, making and reshaping humans into monsters and machines. Maybe it has dwindled since the Second World War, but she'd have to be a very different person not to notice how Wanda startles when a door opens, even when she's expecting it. So there are fewer horrors these days, but horrors all the same.

She tilts her head. "Are you going in for a capture or kill?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "I'm here for Steve," he says. "Someone has to watch his back." He gives her a look, appraising. She hasn't seen that expression on his face for a lifetime. Not since she was a child. "I figured Steve would either come back because he had to - for the kid or because he was ordered too. Never thought he'd come back because he figured it out. Should have, though. He never had a lick of sense." He shakes his head, eyes tracking Steve's passaged toward the castle. "But you?" he asks, looking at her again. "This isn't like you, Natashka. You're smarter than this."

She shrugs her pack off her back and unzips the top. A contraption of metal and leather sits inside. It's an artefact, on extended leave from one of SHIELD's old containment facilities. They used to be called _scold's bridles_ but they're not so much in circulation now. She tips the open pack so he can see inside, and he looks, then his head jerks up and to the side, as if she'd slapped him. 

"You're right," she says. "I am."

 


	26. Chapter 26

 

Steve isn’t worried about Natasha’s disappearance. If this reality is true, then he’s worked with her long enough to know she can take care of herself. She’s not likely to wind up imprisoned like some fairytale princess waiting for rescue. Much more likely she’s silently unzipping someone from neck to nuts. It’s not how Steve operates. It’s not the world he prefers. But Natasha has her reasons and her methods and he’s not going to challenge either of those things.

And if this reality is actually a construct of a breaking mind, then there’s no need to worry about her anyway, since she represents an avatar of himself and not something made of flesh that splits and bones that break, something with an expiration date.

It would almost be better if all this was unreal, he thinks. It would be easier. Bucky still dead, the guilt and horror that his appearance awakened in Steve just his over-dramatic imagination playing up. Peggy’s age and infirmity, the incomplete mosaic of her personality and memories a misery that exists only in Steve’s mind. This Howard Stark future could be cribbed from a story he read in _Astounding Science Fiction_ , not a reality where humans have become sutured to machines and carry listening posts with them everywhere they go. Where airborne eyes can fix and target them for death. Where the very idea of fact has become a slippery political thing instead of provable truth. An unparsable, incomprehensible world. A fever dream of unimpeded power operating, out in the open and bare, and no one bothered by the evil of it. Of flesh sutured to machines. Of alliances that shift like a crust of ice moving over top of the unseen currents of the sea.

It would be easier if it was all in his mind. Perhaps it is. Not because it's easier, but because it's more likely. What are the odds that someone would have pulled him out of the ice? That Bucky might have lived and been warped and twisted like this? That Peggy would go quietly into that good night? Low. The odds seem to him to be very low.

“Hey,” Logan’s voice is a low warning. “Keep it together.”

Steve meets Logan’s eyes and nods. If they are all avatars then Logan is the better man, the one who lived to D-Day, a heroic final charge that, against all odds, at terrible cost, turned the tide of the war in Europe. He nods.

“Yes, sir.”

Logan’s eyes linger on him just a second longer than they should, as if he knows that Steve has seen through the fiction, but to comment on it would be self-negating.

They pass into the castle just like last time; through the ruined mouth of the gate, with spars of the portcullis hanging like smashed teeth in a gaping mouth. They pass through the killing yard, the gravel is frozen solid and there are patches of ragged, sharp-blades grass stabbing upward through the snow. Once this was a place that mired men, sunk them to their ankles, broke the legs of war horses, slowed advance forces so that archers could pick them off one by one. Now it is a gravel path, coldly glittering like the Milky Way.

In the gateyard Steve sheds them one by one. Wanda, the part of him that wishes he could save Bucky, vanishes into darkness on the left. Storm, the calm and clear-eyed person he wishes he was, moving quickly after her. Logan, his better soldier-self, takes the right, and Steve sees the gleam of blades in or perhaps on his hands just before he disappears from sight. Natasha, the deepest darkness in him, is already gone on her own, private mission. All that remains are the sound of his boots tap-tap-tapping across the frost-dazzled floor.

Here Steve is, in a ruin that was once a kingly dwelling place. A great hall with soaring rafters festooned with bird shit and cobwebs, a cellar and cistern turned laboratory and cages, and bedrooms painted with stars, shut up and hidden from the occupants, comforts left to moulder, beauty ruined.

He takes the stairs up, to the bedrooms and  becomes aware as he steps up and up and up that the world has frayed a little at one corner. It stands a little proud, as if the glue has let go, but only when he’s not looking directly at it. When he turns his head, it is all smooth and seamless. A perfect facsimile of a world. 

Well. 

In another lifetime, he wasn’t this. He was an artist. A good one.

He climbs, reaches the broken door and pushes through and looks up at the stars.  They are fresco, those silver frost-rimed stars. He made them and they are fresco. He has never done fresco in his life, but he knows how the Romans did it, he has seen their walls, parts even of their lives preserved as if in a jar under the ash of mount Vesuvius. These stars are like the alien and vivid frescos there, the stars are raised just a little, some of them, giving them the effect of distance and nearness all at once.

And  _here_ the tattered edge has invaded his field of view. Here the world is a painted backdrop, a propaganda poster for a life outside the ice.

 

He reaches for it, and tugs it free. The water rushes in.

 


	27. Chapter 27

Steve doesn’t even feel it anymore. The intense cold of the arctic water is no longer an enemy now, it simply is, and was, and will always be. All his endless, numberless days are the same; an undivided smear of time across the back of his eyes. The water is neither dark and brackish nor clear and stinging, just water. It fills his lungs and fills his eyes and fills his mouth and his belly and is all he was or ever will be.

After the end of this, the greatest, broadest, and most fanciful of his imaginary lives in the ice, he finds he doesn’t mind dying quite so much. He finds himself tired, and sick of sorrow. He feels a weariness he only ever imagined could be the province of the octogenarian combat veterans he imagined in this daydream.

He can feel the exhaustion of the serum, which has renewed his impossible life again and again. It’s ebbing, like a heartbeat slipping down to rest. He knows it’s only a matter of time until stops.

  
_So this is death._

  
It should frighten him, but it doesn’t.  
With every asthma attack, with every bad backalley fight, and later, on the front lines, running toward the machine gun nests, he fought back abject terror, and was always afraid of death. How many asthma attacks and punches to the head and bullet wounds? How many times has he drowned only to be reborn in the ice, and drown again? He has rehearsed this, and knows how this goes. It is far from the terrible thing he feared it would be. It is easy. Simple.

All he has to do is rest.

*

Bucky follows Steve, through the tattered, worm-eaten hall — once a great hall maybe, then turned into a military-style mess, the plates still linger in a stack by a serving station now slicked over with frost.

Ahead, Steve pauses once in a while. Not listening, which would be _sensible_ and _prudent, c’mon Steve,_ but looking. Up at the rafters as if they were festooned with glory instead of bird shit and tattered nests, through smashed-out windows as if they were not jagged as bear traps, and the world outside wasn’t blank and dark.

Steve takes the stairs at the end of the hall in a soft-footed, slow pace, like a groom going to meet his bride. The hairs on Bucky’s neck stand up. Softly, very softly, he can hear someone whispering, _focus, focus_. That someone is not Steve.

He reaches into the pocket of his jacket for his earplugs.

  
And stops.

  
Why shouldn’t he focus?

  
It is hard these days. In the chaos of his mind, he can lose the word he’s looking for, or forget a promise made, or thing he agreed to do. Dustan called it fog of war, and said it almost jokingly, but it’s fitting, actually.

  
_Focus_.

  
What did he come here for again? To see Steve? To follow him like a shadow? Why? What good is it to anyone?

  
A man like him, with all his advantages, with his skills, his enhancements, his anonymity. A man like him should be doing something more than trailing after Steve Rogers like a forgotten pet dog.  
The world is strange, dangerous. He has the means to make it safer, better. He can do his work from the shadows.

  
Steve does not need an invisible dog shadowing him. He needs one man in the right place at the right time.

  
A snatch of a poem, memorized for high school English class, floats untethered in his mind: 

  
_He works his work, I mine._

  
My work, my mission.

  
_No_.

  
He doesn’t think it so much as feel it. This is the slow slippage toward the emptiness, where there is nothing but confusion and pain and _comply_. This is the melting chocolate on a warm saucer, a cup of coffee with cream and sugar, an SS officer’s disarming talk of unity and peace. This is betraying home and brothers, country and kin, for a kind word and a comfortable chair. This is easy, simple, pleasurable.

  
This is how they did it.

  
He remembers now — a small man with a birdlike face, a twisted sort of smile, saying, _Focus, focus_.

  
This is how they did it. At first.

  
To him, and now to Steve.

  
He puts the earplugs in his ears and goes pelting up the stairs.


	28. Chapter 28

Wanda is down in the soft, warm, dark of the lab. Soothingly and cruelly familiar. There are long tables here, benches with work still mouldering where it was left in place. The soft glow of emergency lighting suffuses the place like a gas. A bank of monitors, some on, some off, some spasming between those states. Security footage of a dead laboratory, unblinking owl eyes fixed on the doings of rats and birds, mostly. But also this:

The re-enforced cells that were home for her and for Pietro.

They are bare and featureless, cruelty made manifest by the absence of comfort. In her memory there was a couch with a patterned blanket, all reds and blues and blacks, the fringe always in need of tidying, and a bed, and a bookshelf. A small and simple washroom, a little mirror and little basin and little shower that was her own. A low shelf of books. A rug. But she knows her memory has been fucked with, is flawed.

Those things are not and never were. They are cells, empty and featureless. Except for one, which contains a supine figure lying stretched out on the empty floor, hands clasped behind his head as if daydreaming up at clouds. The monitor registers and registers and registers him; Pietro, alive, at rest.

It registers, too, a figure racing through a dark stair, taking the steps three and more at a time. He is moving toward Steve, like a comet, a missile, a superstorm.

She needs to move fast. First Pietro, and then the interloper. If Steve has taught her anything it is this: first, the mission. Everything else after that. And no one is left behind.

  
*

  
Storm pauses to allow Logan to catch up to her with dignity. She works one earplug out and smiles at him.

“Did you change your mind about your own beat?” she asks.

“I’m done. I’m just efficient, that’s all,” he answers.

“You’ve been here before.”

He shrugs. “It’s changed.”

She looks around rather pointedly. “I think I’d fire the renovators,” she says.

“Nah,” he answers. “Looks way better this way.” He pauses at a door, something, regret maybe, on his face. She can imagine he once told himself he would never return to this place, that he had put his experience here behind him. She imagines it took some work to reach that point.

She clears her throat, deliberately loud in the ringing, cold silence. He looks at her.

“I think it’s “ladies first”.”

He gives her the wry little smile she hoped for, and pushes open the doors.

“After you.”

*

Her pocket is vibrating. Three short, three long. Stop. Three short, three log again. That’s Clint. And it’s not that he’s actually sending a Morse code SOS, it’s that he loves the ABBA song. But now is a hell of a bad time to be taking out an earplug.

Which is something he must know, so she finds a still and quiet place, eases down into a pool of shadow, and takes a look at her phone.

_Jones says her hypnotist never did anything himself._

_I think your going to have to fight your way to him_

_Through people who don’t know what they’re doing._

She frowns at the phone. She frowns up at the darkness. There was a time that last thing wouldn’t have mattered. But it does now. And morality complicates things.

 

 

 

 


	29. Chapter 29

Bucky finds Steve standing in the middle of a dark room. Just standing there in the middle of the place, looking up at a ceiling that’s mostly mouldered away, the plaster hanging in wet chunks from the lathe, the lathe a warren of mouse and bird nests. In a few places, the ceiling has retained its integrity against the creeping weather, and Bucky can see it was once midnight blue, and spangled with little silver stars, though not much of that remains. Steve is standing under one of these patches of ceiling, his whole body angled up, as if all of him is trying to see. He looks like a piece of art, a classical sculpture separated from its background, perhaps the last of a group of figures to survive hundreds of years of war and destruction, missing the group that was carved with him, so that conservators and experts can only guess at what should be there.

He thinks of Dustan, imagines him musing about context, about how the attitude of the sculpture’s body implies what is missing. Perhaps it is a statue of Icarus, pointed toward the sun that is his doom, and the wings are what is gone. Perhaps it is Hermes, the instant before setting off at some god’s bidding, the divine commander absent. Perhaps he is a nameless athlete with neither spear nor discus, some frozen ideal from an era passed but not quite forgotten.

But there is some context here, because behind Steve is a small man who leans upon a metal cane, whose vicious mouth is moving in command.

Steve’s straining body shudders. He seems to pluck something from one arm and squirm around it. He steps, twice, as if stepping out of a net. Then he turns toward Bucky, his eyes open but weirdly sightless, his mouth a teeth-bared grimace, as if he has been running too hard and too long.

The old man’s mouth moves. Steve cracks a smile. His eyes focus on Bucky, clear and calm. The look on his face says there's going to be trouble if somebody doesn't back down, and there was a time that look was a joke between them, but Bucky ain’t laughing now.

Steve’s mouth moves, a red smear in the grey-blue-white-black cold. The mouth Bucky once smashed bloody with a metal fist. The mouth he once kissed like it was going to kill them both. The mouth that whispered his name in the dark. Steve says something Bucky can’t hear and can't read on his lips, and then something more, and Bucky can guess, based on posture and expression and on the sounds muffled by the earplugs:

This doesn’t have to end in a fight.

But it does. It always does. Because Steve never once in his life ever back down from anything, and Bucky, hell. Bucky doesn't know what Steve thinks he's doing, but that's fine. It's fine. All he has to do is get to Fennhoff and all this is going to be over.

So Bucky pulls closes the part of his mind that sees Steve and longs for him, that built a sun-drenched apartment for them, that survived in part on the memory of a muffled, awkward, once upon a time in France. He pushes out the warmth of memory and hope, and pulls the cold inside of him again. He shifts his weight so he’s even on both feet. When Steve comes at him, he’s ready.

 

*

 

This is not a fantasy. There’s a super-realness to his fantasies that makes them somehow more true and immediate than the reality of being in the _Valkyrie_. Perhaps it’s just how his mind copes with the water, the cold, the horror. Whatever the reason, while he was in the middle of the last fantasy, something must have happened. The _Valkyrie_ must have been raised or found a sandbar or become locked in ice; the water has receded. He is not drowning anymore, only tangled in wires and cables. He can get free. Christ Almighty. He can get free.

He pulls one wire from his arm and shimmies it around him. It eases the mess of wires that tangle him to the console. Whatever power the _Valkyrie_ once has is long since perished, her heart gone cold. There's no fear of fire any more. It's over. At least, that part of it. He can hear the running footsteps, coming toward him, fast and heavy, but he has to focus on the wires, to get free before he can turn and look.

Finally, he looks. A man in uniform is standing in the gloom of the hold. Dark haired, dark eyed, strange and familiar, as if Steve once knew him in a dream. He is wearing an alien uniform, with no rank that Steve can discern. But he knows what the guy is here for. There can only be one reason.

“You should walk away,” he says. Because even now, after everything, he really does believe that people are good. They just need a chance.

But the guy shifts his weight; not retreat but preparation. But Steve gave up everything for to take the Tesseract out of play, and he’s not about to let that all go to waste.

“It doesn’t have to end in a fight,” he says. But it does. He knows it does. The guy is here because he's under orders. Who knows what way the war went, who knows who this soldier represents. But no one would come to the Arctic, to the Valkyrie, for nothing. Surely no one would subject themselves to the cold and misery unless they were under orders. And a good soldier, a loyal soldier, a winter soldier can't just walk away. Steve knows. So he takes the first swing.

 


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10 points to anyone who can spot the Sappho!

All Bucky wants to do is get past Steve, but Steve always was more of a wall than a door. Even when he was a skinny little so and so, he could get in your way like no one else, stick to you like shit on a shoe. The intervening years, however many there have been for him, have only honed that skill.

Bucky doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want to raise his metal arm to turn a blow, he doesn’t want to absorb the impact in his sinews and fire it back, but he does it all the same. It’s natural, as if it’s how he was made. Remade, perhaps.

Steve fights for ground, uses his fists and his feet, but Steve does and always has liked distance. Bucky prefers the extreme distance of a sniper rifle, or the extremely closeness of hand-to-hand, both are intimate in their own way. He tosses his rifle aside, tightens up, head protected by his fists, core taut, elbows pressed against his side to turn the blows. The impact of Steve’s blows moves him, sends him slipping over the frost-rimed floor. When Bucky ducks to avoid a blow to the head, he catches a glimpse of the old man, mouth still moving, one side of his lips twisted up in something predatory like a smile.

Bucky lets a bodyblow shunt him to the right, uses the momentum to move sideways fast and deke around Steve, and suddenly he’s free of the fight. Steve follows, but he’s surprised by the disengage, and it makes him slow. Bucky launches himself toward Fennhoff. Two long strides, that’s all he needs.

But Steve catches his arm, his left arm, and his grip is bone-crushing. All at once Bucky understands that before Steve’s heart wasn’t in it. But now? Now he’s not defending, pushing Bucky back, offering him a chance to change his mind. Now he’s serious and this is finally, actually a fight.

Steve wrenches him hard. The circuits in Bucky’s shoulder scream a warning — hyper extension, risk of a short, disconnection. It’s not pain exactly, it’s pain-adjacent, a noise that invades his head and causes all the same physiological reactions as pain:Panic, fear, an animal impulse to get away from the source of the sensation. He follows the force of the pull; to resist is too dangerous. Steve lets him go and Bucky goes stumbling. Steve doesn’t follow. He stands with his mouth in a grimace, panting through his teeth and looks right at Bucky. Ready for round two.

“C’mon, pal,” Bucky whispers. Steve says something and Bucky’s tempted to take the earplugs out. Tempted, but not a fucking idiot. He catches his breath and brings up his hands, open.

“Just trying to get past, that’s all.”

Steve flashes a little smile as if he’s thinking, _well, he’s loyal, I’ll give him that._ And, Christ, wasn’t that just Bucky’s goddamned undoing? He must show it in his face, because Steve’s head comes up,a precursor to some unheard bravado, and Bucky’s about had it with the old man and mind control and the war that ought to be over and will not fucking end. He looks back at Steve. Steve the Immovable Goddamned Object.

 

Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, gotta go through it.

He moves in, and this time it’s for real.

Bucky doesn’t remember much of the battle on the helicarrier. He remembers a blur of motion, the pleasure of a combatant that was worthy of him, the absolute _No_ of allowing survival. He remembers all that shattering along with, it seemed, the whole damn world. Now it’s something different. Fighting is a fucking mercy. If he gives up, if he fails here, it’s not the Chair for him. It’s not a freezer. It’s not an agony of interrogation and retraining. It’s back to Bucharest. But for Steve? It’s life as a weapon.

So he fights, because he always used to. Fought to hide how much he was in love, never to show how goddamned scared he was, fought to make himself get up out of trenches and out of shell holes and off gurneys and to walk, just walk, and pretend everything was going to be all right. Fought to hang on to the train. Fought to stay alive there in the snow. Fought to remember. Fought to live. Fought to understand Steve’s words on the helicarrier, fought to allow them through the blank emptiness in his mind. Fight is what he is, sometimes all he is. Loyalty and love and _fight_. And damned if he’s come through war and torment and fire and brimstone only to see it happen again, and this time to Steve.

  
So it’s a mercy, this savagery, this assault. It’s a mercy to knock Steve stumbling with a blow to the sternum, and follow up with a punch to that stubborn square jaw. It’s a mercy for Bucky to run him down with the weight of his body, to shove him back step by step. Because if he doesn’t get through Steve and shut Fennhoff up, there’s something far worse than _mission: incomplete_ awaiting them both. He falls on Steve like thunder falling on mountain oaks, like an avalanche. Steve gives ground for nearly ten feet, arms up, staggered, stunned. Bucky’s close enough now he can see Fennhoff’s suit is worn in patches, and his natty little tie pin glints gold in the weak light. Bucky slams Steve’s chest with one open hand, breaks away from him, and reaches for Fennhoff.

Which is when something very large and very green picks Bucky up as if he’s Fay Wray, and holds Bucky in its huge fist. Bucky stares for a minute, first at the colossal fist and, after a moment, at the colossal face.

Then he punches the big gorilla right in the kisser.

With the benefit of hindsight, that probably wasn’t the best plan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this reads ok. It’s another bus post!


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Squeaking in an update. Sorry it’s short!

There’s something weird going on. At first Steve feels a wash of relief when the Hulk looms out of the shadows and into the space between the Soldier and the Tesseract. This Soldier is good, very good. Tenacious and tough and the sort of strong that means that arm is part of his enhancement, not just fancy prosthetic. Steve was being hard pressed. It was even odds that he might have come out worse in that fight; the first time in a long time.

So he feels relief, at first. And then confusion.

Because it doesn’t make sense.

The Hulk was a feature of his last fantasy. Some avatar of himself that he was setting out to rescue. But he left that dream world and came back to the Valkyrie. Just in time, it seemed. Because there was a stranger coming for the Tesseract.

Except.

Now the Hulk is here, larger than life and interacting with the world, and whatever sickness Steve has in his brain, it has never interacted with the world before. Even if it had, that interaction would have to be one-sided. The Hulk couldn’t possibly pick up someone real.

Unless—

It falls over him like a wave. The _Valkyrie_ tears like wet paper, steel walls peel back, the hull sloughs away. He doesn’t need to reach up and pull it apart; the whole world is so tattered it’s falling to pieces on its own. Suddenly he’s back in the castle, his panting breaths that make a ghost before him in the air, and the Hulk is holding Bucky in one fist, like a child with like a doll, and behind that, a small man Steve recognizes from a Wikipedia page is staring at him with wide and panicked eyes.

Steve sees Bucky take a good look at the Hulk and he knows exactly what that means.

“No!” he shouts, “Bucky, no!”

Bucky pulls back and clocks the Hulk right in the face. The Hulk doesn’t move, only stares. Steve holds a breath in his chest. Maybe—

 _Now_ the Hulk moves. Then there’s a boom as the Hulk strikes the ground with Bucky in his fist. Dust blows up, rock chips fall like rain, the stars are starting to fall. Boom, again, an something wet and warm splatters Steve’s face. He doesn’t have to see it to know it’s blood. Whatever else Bucky is, he’s not Hulk-proof. But if Fennhoff starts to talk—

He sprints for Fennhoff. It’s mere steps to him. He catches the old man by the lapels as if this was some barroom fight, heaves him off his feet, hears himself hissing _you son of a bitch_.

Someone grabs his arm, yanks him around. He drops Fennhoff, and turns to see Thor. 

Thor’s broad brow is knotted with concern, his usually cheerful face is all worry. “I am sorry, my friend,” Thor tells him, and sounds like he means it, truly. Steve opens his mouth to ask what he’s sorry for, just in time to get a knuckle sandwich.


	32. Chapter 32

Steve goes back a half dozen steps, arms pinwheeling, then gets his balance and squares up. This is not what he was hoping for when he got out of bed this morning.

Thor advances on him, speaking as he comes, “You’ve been bewitched, my friend. Someone has put a glamour on you.  Dr Fennhoff is not our enemy.” Thor’s voice is low and calm, as if he’s speaking to a frightened animal. “Listen to him; he can help you.”

Steve can see, out of the corner of his eye, the Hulk holding Bucky up to look at him, and the sickening bonelessness of Bucky’s slumped-over body. Steve shakes his head, says, "Sorry about this," and rushes Thor. He gets under Thor’s arms, heaves him up, and lets the momentum of his charge throw them both on the ground. But Steve has been fighting for what feels like days. Thor is fresh and fast. Thor is up before Steve staggers to his feet. He gets in Steve's way, an invitation for Steve to go back to grappling with him. Instead he lurches for Fennhoff, only to find he’s moved, is moving, back from the fight. Out of reach again.

Thor intercepts.

“Go, good doctor,” he yells. “We will hold him here.”

Fennhoff doesn’t acknowledge, just keeps moving toward the landing and the stairwell that leads down to the labs, to the place where Steve first encountered Strucker. That was Strucker, wasn’t it? Steve’s mind is tangled between two memories. Strucker and Fennhoff. They both spoke to him, but he can’t remember what either of them said. Was Bucky there, too? He can’t remember. There’s no time to chase his thoughts. Thor is in his face, and now something moves in the shadows by the stairs, a shape. Steve has a wild surge of terror. Maybe Ultron _was_ real, maybe Fennhoff has summoned it. He doesn’t have time to parse that shadow; Thor shoves Steve back.

Behind him, behind Fennhoff, too, the dark shape at the stairs materializes. Petite and red haired, shaking something free of a small pack. Something that glisters and gleams in the low light. Natasha. She drops the object neatly over Fennhoff’s head, with the practiced grace of an old hand with a garrotte. 

All the hairs on Steve stand up on end. It’s not the sight of a Natasha dropping a cage over Fennhoff’s face that does it. It’s something else.  Thor has reached out one empty hand and Mjollnir is suddenly there like a magic trick, the scrollwork crackling and electrified. Thor regards him sorrowfully. “This will hurt, my friend. But not for long.” He raises Mjollnir, lightning crackles.  Steve throws himself to the ground. The world booms. And booms and booms.

Like thunder.

Like the helicarrier breaking apart.

Like falling from a height into cold water.

Like mortars, like bombs.

Like waves beating the hull.

Like blood in his ears when he runs, runs hard. 

Like having the shit kicked out of you in an alley fight.

Like the Arctic, trying to get in. 

_Where am I?_

Hands, soft and cool, frame his face. He hears a voice he knows, as if from a long way away. “Steve. Steve, look at me.”

He raises his head and looks into her eyes. Dark, and calm, and full of knowing.  “Disbelieve it,” she says. "All of it. And then see what remains."

He looks down and wills it to be gone. But the frost that silvers the floor remains, along with the places boots have scuffed and scraped it away. Blue and white and gold plaster make snowdrifts all around, though he preferred the stars. He is cold, and wet from sweat, sticky in his gear, and itchy. His heart is still pounding.  This place, hell, the modern world is both more terrible and more beautiful than anything his mind could fashion, artist though he once was. 

He looks at Wanda, feels the coolness of her hands on his flushed face. The ache in his knees from hitting the ground. The bruises where Bucky’s fists landed. That he is hungry and aching with thirst, and tired. That he would like to be somewhere else in some o ther time. A better place, a better time. But this is here and now.  This is what is true. And no matter how he wills it differently, it stays. 

He nods at Wanda. She smiles her tilted little smile. “Feel better?” she asks him softly.

"Not really, no," he answers.

She smiles a little bigger, wry now, and impish. "Now that sounds like reality. Welcome back."

He looks up. There is Fennhoff, bridled and silenced by some ghastly device, and Natasha standing by him. There is Pietro, alive and holding up his hands, fingers splayed, at the razor point of Wolverine's strange knives. And there is Thor, with an expression of startled delight on his face as he looks at Storm, who is glowing softly in the dim light, electricity still surging through her hair and clothing. And there is the Hulk, carefully laying a shape out on the cold ground.

"Bucky," Steve whispers. He stumbles up to his feet, and goes to him.

 


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, guys, I am so sorry about the delay. Everything went kablooie. There were work deadlines, and the tiny human got a cold and stopped sleeping through the night, and edits to the new novel came in and and and anyway, I made you wait a long damn time for the denouement and I'm very sorry.

The first thing Steve notices is the warmth of him. Bucky’s shoulders radiate heat after the hard workout of sustained combat, the only warm thing in the whole damn place. Just like Azano, where the air of the lab was cold and stale, just like Camp Lehigh when he and Natasha walked into the tomb of the SSR. Every part of Steve wants to pull Bucky in and embrace him, hold him tight and sag against him. But Bucky is reeling, disoriented, unbalanced. His arms are thrown out in front of him as if Steve is going to rush him. And…

And behind Bucky, other things are happening. Thor is looking at Storm with this mixture of admiration and delight that Steve associates with children watching a really good magician do a card trick.

“I have not had the pleasure,” he tells her.

Logan bristles like an older brother who can smell trouble on the wind. Storm’s expression, on the other hand, is politely curious.

“Ororo Munro,” she says.

“Thor Odinson,” he answers, maybe a little breathlessly. “God of thunder.”

The corner of Storm’s mouth twitches but whatever that signifies, she keeps it to herself. So that’s okay then.

Near them, though, things are not so serene. The Hulk is backing up, step by step, like a bull taking the measure of a matador. Wanda and Pietro get out of the way.

“Lied,” Hulk booms. Natasha moves toward him, one had upraised and open.

“Yeah, buddy. He lied to all of us.”

“Hulk hurt friends.”

“Yeah, you did," she says it kindly. "But it’s not your fault.” She touches his clenched fist and it’s as if her touch is an electric shock; the Hulk turns with a roar like a thunderclap and booms his way right through the wall. Wanda yelps, Pietro blurs and reappears beside his sister, moving faster than Steve can track, even with all his enhancements.  

"Shit," Natasha whispers. She looks at the nearest person, Thor, as if to say,  _how did that happen?_

“Never fear," Thor tells her. "It is stung pride. I know something of that.” He casts an apologetic smile Storm’s way. “I hope we will meet again.” Then he bellows,  _Friend_ , out the Hulk-shaped hole in the wall, and disappears out into the night , red cloak flapping behind him.

Steve looks back at Bucky. 

“No,” Bucky says and reels back from Steve. Steve remembers the letters with a sickening lurch, their content jumbled and confused, a patchwork of languages and objects and memories. Steve backs off. Natasha touches his shoulder with a grip that’s not commanding or restraining. It's more the sort of touch you might use to restrain a friend being too friendly with a stray dog.

“Someone needs to get Fennhoff to the quinjet,” she murmurs. "And he's a bit too big for me to carry."

Yeah. Steve nods. Sure. Somebody ought to do that. He looks at Bucky again. It's like there are two Buckys standing there; the shape of his face is the same. The angle of the jaw, the colour of the eyes. But the Bucky that was was entirely different as well. It is as if two men inhabit the same space, as if one of them is dead, and the other is wearing his body like a suit. Steve can't tell which of them is which.

“I’ll make sure he’s okay,” she tells him. "You get Fennhoff back to New York."

He nods at her, not taking his eyes off Bucky. He moves toward Fennhoff and in doing, he passes close to Bucky, deliberately close, like a comet pulled into the gravity well of the sun, heedless of the way the nearness burns.

"Write sometime," he whispers. 

Bucky stares at him. "Pretty sure you owe me, pal," he rasps, and Steve's not sure what to think of that. Maybe he never got the package, the money. Maybe he did and he doesn't remember. And then Natasha is there, taking his weight a little, steadying him, and Steve has Fennhoff to deal with.

 

 

*

 

Bucky’s head is telling him that on a scale of “stay home and read books” to “follow Steve Rogers into the teeth of a fight” the decision to punch the giant green guy in the face was “shoot yourself out of a cannon toward the front lines.”

He tries to get up, because it’s never a good idea to be lying down injured when the thing that injured you can (i) crush you like a bug underfoot and (ii) seems inclined to.

As he struggles up to his feet, someone grabs him.

Afterward, he’ll be ashamed to say he flailed. The Winter Soldier makes a noise like _guh_ and grabs for the hands that grab him, and misses spectacularly. He realizes he’s staggering, and the warmth running down his face isn’t limited to the stinging of a bloody, broken nose. His ears are bleeding, too, a steady tickling on the sensitive parts of his neck. Which might be why all he can hear is a high-pitched whine like the sound of a power station. His eardrums. So, that’ll be fucking with his balance then, too. Whoopie.

A face swims into view. Steve. Mouth opened, mid-question. Asking something.

“No,” he blurts and pushes Steve away, not hard, just hard enough to move him back a step.

So much for maintaining distance. So much for keeping Steve at arms length. All the things that were true about how he’s dangerous to Steve are still true today. He fucked up. But, let’s face it, a giant green man had not featured in his calculations.

Steve asks something, eyes as kind and blue as they ever were, but his posture angled just slightly back, wary. Bucky wants to both go to him and push him away. He pushes Steve again and goes backward himself. Oops.

He sees rather than hears Natasha, interceding like a saint. A hand on Steve’s arm, a word or two spoken. Her eyes and head indicating Fennhoff. Steve’s face an agony of indecision. He sees the mask of duty go on, as surely as if Steve was buckling it over his own face. He nods, sings the shield on his back, starts toward Fennhoff. But his eyes, like Bucky’s always used to be, they look a little wild behind the mask. Bucky knows that look. A desperate want, a need to ask a question, to hear an answer that won’t be given to him.

"Write sometime," Steve murmurs. And Bucky, if he was in his senses, would tilt his head and make a disgusted noise and look at Steve like Steve was something stuck to the heel of Bucky's shoe after a night out.  _C'mon, pal. I wrote you like twelve letters and a thank you note._ But Bucky's head is splitting and his balance is hovering around the adequate mark, and the only thing left in him is brass. 

"Pretty sure you owe me, pal," he rasps.

Steve's expression doesn't change. He just goes to Fennhoff, and Natasha comes over to Bucky. 

"It's bad," he admits when she's close enough that he can whisper it.

"I figured that. You're standing at an angle and you're bleeding out your ears," she answers. 

She gets him out of there.

 

*

 

Later, much later, when Steve gets home, and Pepper's dark-eyed from endless media events, and Tony is on every TV Steve sees, and there's talk that the UN is going to be involving itself in the affairs of groups like the Avengers, and Steve has taken a bouquet of wilting dahlias to Peggy, and called Sharon to tell her that he's on his way home, much later, Steve stops at the bodega with the post office box. Inside, there's a little letter. It's simple, plain, cream-coloured paper, and the letter is addressed to this post office box in his own hand. 

He laughs softly, and takes it home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are other things I want to do with this, so I might add a coda later on, but for now, thank you for coming along on this bananaboat ride.


End file.
